Fic: In Arduis Fidelis (1/1)
Title: In Arduis Fidelis
Author: Gillian Taylor
Character/Pairing: John Watson
Rating: R
Summary: They say that in your last few seconds your life flashes before your eyes. Whoever they are, they’re wrong.
Disclaimer: Don't own them. I just like playing with them...a lot.
A/N: Thanks to wendymr for her encouragement and BRing. Thanks, too, to nnwest for the plotting :)
WARNING: Graphic violence, scenes of war.
In Arduis Fidelis
By Gillian Taylor
"If you'd been murdered, in your very last few seconds, what would you say?"
"Please, God, let me live."
"Oh, use your imagination."
"..I don't have to."
-- From "A Study In Pink"
They say that in your last few seconds your life flashes before your eyes. Whoever they are, they’re wrong.
The sky flares bright green, overloading the night vision goggles and blinding him in the same instant. John curses as the night erupts into the sounds of gunfire and explosions and he rips the useless goggles off his face. He’s better off relying on his own vision now.
The world is punctuated by fire. Shouts in unintelligible Pashto alert him not to the number of insurgents but to their presence and he dives for cover behind a rocky outcropping.
John Watson presses his back against the somewhat cool stone and grimaces. Ambush. Of course it’s an ambush. Can’t just have a nice stroll through the Afghan wilderness, can he? Nope, one night patrol and he ends up in a bloody ambush. Figures.
He automatically checks his kit by feel. As a doctor - admittedly, that’s merely a degree he happens to hold. Out here, he’s more a ridiculously over-qualified medic - he needs to be able to respond quickly to any injuries. There’s bound to be plenty of injuries tonight.
John’s learned to hate night patrols.
His gun’s a heavy weight in his hand, but he knows better than to shoot blindly into the darkness. His enemy’s out there, but so are his men. His heart pounds - not in fear, but in excitement - and his lips draw back from his teeth as he grins. A scrape of a foot against the ground behind him makes him turn quickly, getting ready to shoot before asking any questions. There’s a flash of a familiar uniform in the light of the next explosion and he stays his hand.
“Stay down, Captain,” Major Finney orders, pressing a hand into John’s shoulder and keeping him crouched.
The team leader peers around the outcropping and in an instant, everything changes. The sound is deafening - a crack of thunder, the moment of impact, and Major Finney is on the ground, blood coating his uniform. John drops his gun, reaching frantically for his kit.
He can barely see and dares to don the night vision goggles again. This wasn’t part of basic training, or even his medical training at Bart’s. No-one ever told him he’d be in Afghanistan, trying to keep his commanding officer alive in the middle of a fire fight at night wearing night vision goggles.
John’s concentrating on applying pressure, attempting some measure of battlefield medicine so his patient will survive the trip back to base. He doesn’t notice when someone moves in behind him.
He does notice the gun pressed into his temple.
“Come.” The word has a strong accent, barely understandable, but he can’t leave now. The Major needs him.
The gun presses harder into his temple and jerks upwards, an indication for him to stand. “Come!”
He’s being captured. By the enemy. “No, I sodding will not,” he retorts and returns his attention to his patient. If he can wrap the wound just a bit tighter, Finney will make it through this.
The gun moves from his temple and fires, causing his patient to jerk beneath his hands. A perfect hole in the centre of Finney’s forehead tells him exactly where the Afghan rebel shot.
“Come.”
This time, he obeys.
He keeps track of the days by scratching lines into the wall with his fingernails each time he sees the sunrise. He’s almost down to the quick of his nails now - apparently ten days is the maximum amount of time anyone can be expected to scratch on rock without drawing blood.
He hasn’t eaten for at least five days. What water he gets he doesn’t particularly want to think about - there’s no telling what’s living in it and he hopes he doesn’t end up with dysentery on top of everything else. These things aren’t insurmountable. He can survive for weeks without food as long as he keeps getting water, but it won’t be a pleasant way to end his life.
John grits his teeth and tells himself not to dwell on it. He’s either going to die or he’s not. If he dies, it’s going to be as a soldier. If he lives, well, he’s not going to call that an ‘if’. He’s not ready to die. There’s too much do at home, including an attempt to convince Harry that her drinking is ruining her life. His plans certainly don’t include dying in some hellhole called Afghanistan.
There’s a scrape of a foot against the ground outside and he straightens himself up instinctively. He’s not going to show weakness. Not now. Not when he’s due for another one of the insurgents’ little ‘visits’.
What will it be this time?
A camera again? They’ve done that at least four times now. His imagination is vivid enough to remind him of the practice. A camera is trained on his face, carefully placed to avoid capturing the swordsman waiting just off-screen. There’s a card inscribed with poor English that he has to read, telling whomever will get this particular tape that he’ll be released only if his country withdraws from the war. If he dares to falter in his reading or refuse, he’ll die.
It’s become rather predictable now.
Two days ago, they made him watch some other poor soldier read from that same card. The lad was only identifiable as an American from his accent as he read the words in a faltering voice. He was painfully thin, on the verge if not in the midst of starvation, but there was definite defiance in the man’s eyes.
Admirable, John originally thought. That was when it went from bad to worse. The swordsman swung without warning, slicing a second smile into the American’s neck with a spray of blood.
John’s vision narrowed until all he could see was the blood spurting from the wound with each beat of the poor man’s heart. He could stop this. God, he could stop this. He started fighting to get to the American’s side without realising he’d moved. He had a minute, probably less, before the poor bloke was gone.
He could stop this.
Hands held him in a bruising grip, stopping his movement before he could do more than take a step.
“Watch,” someone said, hissing the word into his ear.
The American still lived - despite the pool of arterial blood beneath him. The swordsman stood at the ready as other rebels stepped forward, holding the man still.
He was forced to watch as the swordsman began to slice through neck muscles and tendons, each move a graphic impossibility. They couldn’t do that. Prisoners of War had rights.
“NO!” he shouted and the rebels laughed.
He tried to look away. They slapped his face and told him to watch or he’d be next.
His stomach - normally made of iron thanks to the barely palatable MREs that tended to be a soldier’s fare when on the front - churned at the sight. No. No, no, no.
The man was dead. And they continued with their gruesome task until the head was pulled grotesquely back into a position not possible in life. That couldn’t have just happened. That didn’t just happen.
Oh, god.
His captors smiled - undoubtedly reading the look on his face. “This punishment,” one of them said in broken English. “You next.”
His captors forced him to stand above the cooling body, his feet in the pool of drying blood.
“Read,” one of them commanded, pressing a gun to the back of his head for a brief moment in warning.
He could say ‘no’. He should say no, but he knew what would happen if he did. He wanted to live. God help him, he wanted to live.
So he licked his lips and read. Slowly. Methodically. He tried to distance himself from the words and the situation, but every few seconds, he’d catch sight of the man with the bloody sword or he shifted and his feet slipped slightly in the blood.
The rebels wanted him to remember this. They wanted him to remember this moment for the rest of his life - however long or short it might be.
This was war. Psychological and literal. Damnit, he wasn’t going to break. Not because of this. They wanted to see him falter. They wanted him to give in. He clenched his hands into fists, feeling the cut of his nails against his skin and blinked an ‘SOS’ at the camera in the hope that someone might see this video. Someone might rescue him if he didn’t manage to rescue himself first.
He’d been told of Taliban tactics. He’d heard of the videos sent to military command with the essential warnings of ‘you’re next’. This was the first time he had first-hand knowledge of those tactics.
John still dreams of that moment. He’d been a damned innocent before. Not now.
The American’s fate was not going to be his own.
He knows he’s getting weaker from the lack of food and water. It will impair his ability to escape, but he isn’t going to let himself die here in this cell. The first duty of a POW is to escape.
They’ll have to grow complacent at some point. They’ll have to lower their guard. It’s only a matter of time, and by God, he’s going to take advantage of that chance when it comes. He’s not going to die here. He’s going to go home. He’s going to hold his sister in his arms again. He’s going to see London again.
The guards are getting closer. He can hear them in the hallway. He can feel his heart beating in his chest, excitement coursing through his body. Fight or flight, they called it.
He called it life.
The door to his cell opens with a bang and insurgents pour into the room. He’s managed to pick up a few words of Pashto in his time here and he knows what they’re saying.
It’s time for another interrogation.
His legs won’t hold him up any longer and he collapses into the dirt floor of his cell with a barely suppressed gasp of pain. Blood mingles with the dust, forming a grotesque mud, but he can’t bring himself to care.
It’s getting worse. The interrogations are getting longer and more detailed. He might only be a lowly captain, but that doesn’t seem to matter to this lot. They demand to know troop strengths and movements. They demand to know how to get into his base, what the code words are. He doesn’t know the answers to their questions.
The army base where he was stationed would’ve changed the codes since he was captured. Even if he told them something truthful, it wouldn’t matter because they couldn’t use it. Doesn’t matter, though. He has to last as long as possible without giving in. He may want to go home, but he’s clever enough to know that what these rebels promise is a lie. They won’t let him leave this place alive.
If his first duty is escape, his second duty is to lie so frequently and so convincingly when interrogated that when the truth finally comes out his captors won’t know the difference. His instructors told him that no-one can resist torture forever. Everyone breaks.
Even him.
He can’t take another session like that one. If he closes his eyes, he can still see the interrogator - Big Nose, he’s decided to call him thanks to the rather large example of that part of anatomy the man sports. Big Nose loves coaxing sound out of his subjects - a whimper, a cry, a scream - each is cherished. Each one seems to excite Big Nose.
There comes a point where even the most stubborn of men - and John counts himself as one of them - will falter. His body is riddled with marks from a variety of burns and cuts. The fingers of his left hand are broken. Any one of those wounds might get infected. Any one of them might end up killing him. He fears that his leg will never be the same again, but that can’t distract him.
They think he’s weak now - and he is.
They think they’ve broken him - they haven’t.
And, even though it’s sick and wrong, he’s never felt so alive as he does now.
When his captors return with his dinner a few hours later, he doesn’t stir when they enter his cell. He continues to lie on the floor, trying to hold his breath, make them think he’s dead or at least too ill to pose much of a threat. There’s only one of them tonight - he was right. They do think he’s weak.
It’s a matter of distraction and luck that lets him take the man down before he can raise the alarm. The night is his friend now - it cloaks him in darkness, letting him know where the patrols are by the direction of the torchlight. He can avoid them easily now - well, as easily as one can when he’s limping more than he is walking.
He glances at the stars as he hides behind an outcropping, trying to decipher the best direction to head to get back to his people. East? West? God, he doesn’t even know where the hell he is. Nothing for it, he’s got to pick a direction, start walking and pray he doesn’t end up falling down some cliff or running into more rebels.
He walks for what seems like hours, though near the end he’s more crawling than he is walking. His body’s endurance is at its limit. He can’t go much further, but he has to.
There’re lights ahead - a patrol? A camp? Before he has the chance to do more than register their presence, everything goes straight to hell. There’s a shout and the next thing he knows, the night is lit up again with explosions and gunfire. Oh, god, not again.
He forces himself into a crawling, limping, run. He’s in the middle of a battlefield now and nowhere is safe.
He stumbles over rocks, banging his knees painfully several times as he finds boulders in his path - visible only for a few seconds thanks to the burst of an explosion. There. A flash of camouflage - colours that no Afghan rebel would wear.
“Captain John Watson. Don’t shoot. Captain John Watson,” he says, repeating his identity and his plea. He didn’t go through the past two weeks only to be cut down by friendly fire now.
Hands catch him and he’s sat down on the rocky terrain, surrounded by several soldiers. Gunfire still resounds around them, but he feels separated from it all because of both shock and relief at finally, finally, being back amongst his people. His left hand shakes uncontrollably and he tries to stop it with his other hand to little success. “You’re all right, son. We’ll get you to a doctor,” an American voice tells him. Americans, of course. “You just rest now.”
Unconsciousness is both a blessing and a curse when it comes.
John Watson doesn’t wake up for three days.
It’s been three months since he was last out in the field and he barely walks with a limp. He’s considered hale and hearty enough for a ‘cushy’ mission with a convoy, carrying wounded soldiers from one camp to the next.
He’s assigned to one of the trucks, caring for approximately ten soldiers. His job is to ensure their survival, despite the bumpy, dusty and frankly terrible conditions in the back. Groans of pain and a few coughs barely manage to be audible over the roar of the truck’s engine. He has to stop every now and then to attempt to still the infrequent tremble in his left hand - a curse that’s followed him since his stint as a POW.
John’s treating one of the men - ‘Call me Cal,’ the man insisted - when a massive explosion rocks the truck and he’s forced to hold on to Cal’s stretcher to avoid falling as the vehicle slides to a stop.
The sharp report of gunfire begins to echo around them and he curses quietly. “Get down!” he orders his nurse as he does the same, dropping to his knees and pulling his gun free from the holster attached to his leg. The weight of a weapon in his hand is familiar, comforting. He barely notices that the tremor in his hand has stopped.
He crawls towards the back of the truck, grimacing as holes appear in the canopy covering the truck. Bullets won’t be stopped by such flimsy covering, and the insurgents don’t much care who they hit so long as they hit something.
At the back of the truck, he peers around the canvass and sees a nightmare. A Humvee burns beside the truck, victim of an IED. A soldier’s lying beside it, groaning in pain and he can see several insurgents heading towards the poor man.
No. He’s not about to let that happen.
John grabs one of the small medical kits in one hand and disengages the safety on his gun with the other. He climbs out of the truck and runs towards the fallen soldier, firing his weapon at the rebels in an attempt to ward them off. He’s not really aiming, but somehow his bullets find their targets without mercy. It’s only when there’s no-one left running towards them that he crouches beside the soldier - Moran, his uniform declares, and a light colonel. “Sir, I’m a doctor,” he says, setting his gun on the ground within easy reach and opening his kit.
Moran’s face is covered in second and third degree burns. All John can do to help is to douse the wounds with antiseptic, cover them with gauze and hope that the man can survive long enough to get back to a medical tent. These are not sanitary conditions by any means, but he has to do what he can with what he has available.
He’s reaching for another bit of gauze when it happens. There’s a sharp retort and he feels the bullet rip through flesh and muscle, leaving behind a fiery pain. He’s bent over his patient, unable to remember how he got there. Moran’s eyes are wide as he meets John’s gaze.
The world seems to gain a measure of unreality as he fumbles for the gauze. He has a patient. That is more important than any wound. His shoulder throbs in time with his heartbeat and suddenly his hand is slick with blood - his or Moran’s, he can’t tell.
Unsanitary, he thinks, and tries to grab a clean cloth but his hand stops obeying his commands. A spray of bullets shoots tiny dervishes of sand into the air beside him. He should really do something about that.
He should...
Shock, he realises. He’s in shock.
He grits his teeth and reaches for his gun - not his patient? - but it’s not there. No. Moran has it. He sees the rhythmic pulse of the man’s finger on the trigger. Once, twice, three times in succession and then the shooting stops.
“Doctor?” Moran asks.
While John registers the question, he’s incapable of responding.
Please...
His vision’s narrowing to a tunnel and he’s feeling dizzy, tired.
Please God...
Anaemia. Shoulder wound must be...
I’m not ready to die...
His mind gutters and winks out before he can complete his mental diagnosis.
A promotion to major and a medical discharge with full honours.
That’s what they tell him when he wakes, like it’s supposed to give him some measure of comfort that he gets to go home. It doesn’t. He’s supposed to stay here, stick it out for a bit longer, and go home when the rest of his company does. He’s not supposed to wake up to find his own body has turned against him.
He’s not supposed to walk off a plane at Heathrow with a bloody cane.
He’s not supposed to be broken.
John’s assigned to a halfway house that’s meant to give him some sort of stability while he searches for a job and tries to fit into a civilian life. He’s assigned a therapist who stares at him like she thinks she knows him, when she has no bloody clue.
He’s assigned a life here. Here is his room - temporary, always remember that. Here is his laptop - besides the clothes on his back, the Browning in his drawer and the bloody cane the only damned thing he owns. Here is his stupid attempt at trying to live a civilian life.
‘Write something’, his therapist says. ‘It’ll help.’
He hears her words every time he opens the laptop to stare at the blank screen.
What is he supposed to write? That he’s glad to be ‘home?’ He isn’t. Somewhere between gunshots and explosions, London lost the feeling of home he’d used to associate with it. It’s dull. Boring. It’s nothing more than an ordinary city in an ordinary, boring country.
When the words finally come, they’re obvious. This is the truth. This is his life now. Assigned and stamped with the bloody medical discharge notice.
He was a POW. He was injured in war. Now he’s here, trying to fit into a civilian - boring - life that feels two sizes too small.
‘Nothing happens to me.’
FIN
x-posted to: dark_aegis and sherlockbbc
Author: Gillian Taylor
Character/Pairing: John Watson
Rating: R
Summary: They say that in your last few seconds your life flashes before your eyes. Whoever they are, they’re wrong.
Disclaimer: Don't own them. I just like playing with them...a lot.
A/N: Thanks to wendymr for her encouragement and BRing. Thanks, too, to nnwest for the plotting :)
WARNING: Graphic violence, scenes of war.
In Arduis Fidelis
By Gillian Taylor
"If you'd been murdered, in your very last few seconds, what would you say?"
"Please, God, let me live."
"Oh, use your imagination."
"..I don't have to."
-- From "A Study In Pink"
They say that in your last few seconds your life flashes before your eyes. Whoever they are, they’re wrong.
The sky flares bright green, overloading the night vision goggles and blinding him in the same instant. John curses as the night erupts into the sounds of gunfire and explosions and he rips the useless goggles off his face. He’s better off relying on his own vision now.
The world is punctuated by fire. Shouts in unintelligible Pashto alert him not to the number of insurgents but to their presence and he dives for cover behind a rocky outcropping.
John Watson presses his back against the somewhat cool stone and grimaces. Ambush. Of course it’s an ambush. Can’t just have a nice stroll through the Afghan wilderness, can he? Nope, one night patrol and he ends up in a bloody ambush. Figures.
He automatically checks his kit by feel. As a doctor - admittedly, that’s merely a degree he happens to hold. Out here, he’s more a ridiculously over-qualified medic - he needs to be able to respond quickly to any injuries. There’s bound to be plenty of injuries tonight.
John’s learned to hate night patrols.
His gun’s a heavy weight in his hand, but he knows better than to shoot blindly into the darkness. His enemy’s out there, but so are his men. His heart pounds - not in fear, but in excitement - and his lips draw back from his teeth as he grins. A scrape of a foot against the ground behind him makes him turn quickly, getting ready to shoot before asking any questions. There’s a flash of a familiar uniform in the light of the next explosion and he stays his hand.
“Stay down, Captain,” Major Finney orders, pressing a hand into John’s shoulder and keeping him crouched.
The team leader peers around the outcropping and in an instant, everything changes. The sound is deafening - a crack of thunder, the moment of impact, and Major Finney is on the ground, blood coating his uniform. John drops his gun, reaching frantically for his kit.
He can barely see and dares to don the night vision goggles again. This wasn’t part of basic training, or even his medical training at Bart’s. No-one ever told him he’d be in Afghanistan, trying to keep his commanding officer alive in the middle of a fire fight at night wearing night vision goggles.
John’s concentrating on applying pressure, attempting some measure of battlefield medicine so his patient will survive the trip back to base. He doesn’t notice when someone moves in behind him.
He does notice the gun pressed into his temple.
“Come.” The word has a strong accent, barely understandable, but he can’t leave now. The Major needs him.
The gun presses harder into his temple and jerks upwards, an indication for him to stand. “Come!”
He’s being captured. By the enemy. “No, I sodding will not,” he retorts and returns his attention to his patient. If he can wrap the wound just a bit tighter, Finney will make it through this.
The gun moves from his temple and fires, causing his patient to jerk beneath his hands. A perfect hole in the centre of Finney’s forehead tells him exactly where the Afghan rebel shot.
“Come.”
This time, he obeys.
He keeps track of the days by scratching lines into the wall with his fingernails each time he sees the sunrise. He’s almost down to the quick of his nails now - apparently ten days is the maximum amount of time anyone can be expected to scratch on rock without drawing blood.
He hasn’t eaten for at least five days. What water he gets he doesn’t particularly want to think about - there’s no telling what’s living in it and he hopes he doesn’t end up with dysentery on top of everything else. These things aren’t insurmountable. He can survive for weeks without food as long as he keeps getting water, but it won’t be a pleasant way to end his life.
John grits his teeth and tells himself not to dwell on it. He’s either going to die or he’s not. If he dies, it’s going to be as a soldier. If he lives, well, he’s not going to call that an ‘if’. He’s not ready to die. There’s too much do at home, including an attempt to convince Harry that her drinking is ruining her life. His plans certainly don’t include dying in some hellhole called Afghanistan.
There’s a scrape of a foot against the ground outside and he straightens himself up instinctively. He’s not going to show weakness. Not now. Not when he’s due for another one of the insurgents’ little ‘visits’.
What will it be this time?
A camera again? They’ve done that at least four times now. His imagination is vivid enough to remind him of the practice. A camera is trained on his face, carefully placed to avoid capturing the swordsman waiting just off-screen. There’s a card inscribed with poor English that he has to read, telling whomever will get this particular tape that he’ll be released only if his country withdraws from the war. If he dares to falter in his reading or refuse, he’ll die.
It’s become rather predictable now.
Two days ago, they made him watch some other poor soldier read from that same card. The lad was only identifiable as an American from his accent as he read the words in a faltering voice. He was painfully thin, on the verge if not in the midst of starvation, but there was definite defiance in the man’s eyes.
Admirable, John originally thought. That was when it went from bad to worse. The swordsman swung without warning, slicing a second smile into the American’s neck with a spray of blood.
John’s vision narrowed until all he could see was the blood spurting from the wound with each beat of the poor man’s heart. He could stop this. God, he could stop this. He started fighting to get to the American’s side without realising he’d moved. He had a minute, probably less, before the poor bloke was gone.
He could stop this.
Hands held him in a bruising grip, stopping his movement before he could do more than take a step.
“Watch,” someone said, hissing the word into his ear.
The American still lived - despite the pool of arterial blood beneath him. The swordsman stood at the ready as other rebels stepped forward, holding the man still.
He was forced to watch as the swordsman began to slice through neck muscles and tendons, each move a graphic impossibility. They couldn’t do that. Prisoners of War had rights.
“NO!” he shouted and the rebels laughed.
He tried to look away. They slapped his face and told him to watch or he’d be next.
His stomach - normally made of iron thanks to the barely palatable MREs that tended to be a soldier’s fare when on the front - churned at the sight. No. No, no, no.
The man was dead. And they continued with their gruesome task until the head was pulled grotesquely back into a position not possible in life. That couldn’t have just happened. That didn’t just happen.
Oh, god.
His captors smiled - undoubtedly reading the look on his face. “This punishment,” one of them said in broken English. “You next.”
His captors forced him to stand above the cooling body, his feet in the pool of drying blood.
“Read,” one of them commanded, pressing a gun to the back of his head for a brief moment in warning.
He could say ‘no’. He should say no, but he knew what would happen if he did. He wanted to live. God help him, he wanted to live.
So he licked his lips and read. Slowly. Methodically. He tried to distance himself from the words and the situation, but every few seconds, he’d catch sight of the man with the bloody sword or he shifted and his feet slipped slightly in the blood.
The rebels wanted him to remember this. They wanted him to remember this moment for the rest of his life - however long or short it might be.
This was war. Psychological and literal. Damnit, he wasn’t going to break. Not because of this. They wanted to see him falter. They wanted him to give in. He clenched his hands into fists, feeling the cut of his nails against his skin and blinked an ‘SOS’ at the camera in the hope that someone might see this video. Someone might rescue him if he didn’t manage to rescue himself first.
He’d been told of Taliban tactics. He’d heard of the videos sent to military command with the essential warnings of ‘you’re next’. This was the first time he had first-hand knowledge of those tactics.
John still dreams of that moment. He’d been a damned innocent before. Not now.
The American’s fate was not going to be his own.
He knows he’s getting weaker from the lack of food and water. It will impair his ability to escape, but he isn’t going to let himself die here in this cell. The first duty of a POW is to escape.
They’ll have to grow complacent at some point. They’ll have to lower their guard. It’s only a matter of time, and by God, he’s going to take advantage of that chance when it comes. He’s not going to die here. He’s going to go home. He’s going to hold his sister in his arms again. He’s going to see London again.
The guards are getting closer. He can hear them in the hallway. He can feel his heart beating in his chest, excitement coursing through his body. Fight or flight, they called it.
He called it life.
The door to his cell opens with a bang and insurgents pour into the room. He’s managed to pick up a few words of Pashto in his time here and he knows what they’re saying.
It’s time for another interrogation.
His legs won’t hold him up any longer and he collapses into the dirt floor of his cell with a barely suppressed gasp of pain. Blood mingles with the dust, forming a grotesque mud, but he can’t bring himself to care.
It’s getting worse. The interrogations are getting longer and more detailed. He might only be a lowly captain, but that doesn’t seem to matter to this lot. They demand to know troop strengths and movements. They demand to know how to get into his base, what the code words are. He doesn’t know the answers to their questions.
The army base where he was stationed would’ve changed the codes since he was captured. Even if he told them something truthful, it wouldn’t matter because they couldn’t use it. Doesn’t matter, though. He has to last as long as possible without giving in. He may want to go home, but he’s clever enough to know that what these rebels promise is a lie. They won’t let him leave this place alive.
If his first duty is escape, his second duty is to lie so frequently and so convincingly when interrogated that when the truth finally comes out his captors won’t know the difference. His instructors told him that no-one can resist torture forever. Everyone breaks.
Even him.
He can’t take another session like that one. If he closes his eyes, he can still see the interrogator - Big Nose, he’s decided to call him thanks to the rather large example of that part of anatomy the man sports. Big Nose loves coaxing sound out of his subjects - a whimper, a cry, a scream - each is cherished. Each one seems to excite Big Nose.
There comes a point where even the most stubborn of men - and John counts himself as one of them - will falter. His body is riddled with marks from a variety of burns and cuts. The fingers of his left hand are broken. Any one of those wounds might get infected. Any one of them might end up killing him. He fears that his leg will never be the same again, but that can’t distract him.
They think he’s weak now - and he is.
They think they’ve broken him - they haven’t.
And, even though it’s sick and wrong, he’s never felt so alive as he does now.
When his captors return with his dinner a few hours later, he doesn’t stir when they enter his cell. He continues to lie on the floor, trying to hold his breath, make them think he’s dead or at least too ill to pose much of a threat. There’s only one of them tonight - he was right. They do think he’s weak.
It’s a matter of distraction and luck that lets him take the man down before he can raise the alarm. The night is his friend now - it cloaks him in darkness, letting him know where the patrols are by the direction of the torchlight. He can avoid them easily now - well, as easily as one can when he’s limping more than he is walking.
He glances at the stars as he hides behind an outcropping, trying to decipher the best direction to head to get back to his people. East? West? God, he doesn’t even know where the hell he is. Nothing for it, he’s got to pick a direction, start walking and pray he doesn’t end up falling down some cliff or running into more rebels.
He walks for what seems like hours, though near the end he’s more crawling than he is walking. His body’s endurance is at its limit. He can’t go much further, but he has to.
There’re lights ahead - a patrol? A camp? Before he has the chance to do more than register their presence, everything goes straight to hell. There’s a shout and the next thing he knows, the night is lit up again with explosions and gunfire. Oh, god, not again.
He forces himself into a crawling, limping, run. He’s in the middle of a battlefield now and nowhere is safe.
He stumbles over rocks, banging his knees painfully several times as he finds boulders in his path - visible only for a few seconds thanks to the burst of an explosion. There. A flash of camouflage - colours that no Afghan rebel would wear.
“Captain John Watson. Don’t shoot. Captain John Watson,” he says, repeating his identity and his plea. He didn’t go through the past two weeks only to be cut down by friendly fire now.
Hands catch him and he’s sat down on the rocky terrain, surrounded by several soldiers. Gunfire still resounds around them, but he feels separated from it all because of both shock and relief at finally, finally, being back amongst his people. His left hand shakes uncontrollably and he tries to stop it with his other hand to little success. “You’re all right, son. We’ll get you to a doctor,” an American voice tells him. Americans, of course. “You just rest now.”
Unconsciousness is both a blessing and a curse when it comes.
John Watson doesn’t wake up for three days.
It’s been three months since he was last out in the field and he barely walks with a limp. He’s considered hale and hearty enough for a ‘cushy’ mission with a convoy, carrying wounded soldiers from one camp to the next.
He’s assigned to one of the trucks, caring for approximately ten soldiers. His job is to ensure their survival, despite the bumpy, dusty and frankly terrible conditions in the back. Groans of pain and a few coughs barely manage to be audible over the roar of the truck’s engine. He has to stop every now and then to attempt to still the infrequent tremble in his left hand - a curse that’s followed him since his stint as a POW.
John’s treating one of the men - ‘Call me Cal,’ the man insisted - when a massive explosion rocks the truck and he’s forced to hold on to Cal’s stretcher to avoid falling as the vehicle slides to a stop.
The sharp report of gunfire begins to echo around them and he curses quietly. “Get down!” he orders his nurse as he does the same, dropping to his knees and pulling his gun free from the holster attached to his leg. The weight of a weapon in his hand is familiar, comforting. He barely notices that the tremor in his hand has stopped.
He crawls towards the back of the truck, grimacing as holes appear in the canopy covering the truck. Bullets won’t be stopped by such flimsy covering, and the insurgents don’t much care who they hit so long as they hit something.
At the back of the truck, he peers around the canvass and sees a nightmare. A Humvee burns beside the truck, victim of an IED. A soldier’s lying beside it, groaning in pain and he can see several insurgents heading towards the poor man.
No. He’s not about to let that happen.
John grabs one of the small medical kits in one hand and disengages the safety on his gun with the other. He climbs out of the truck and runs towards the fallen soldier, firing his weapon at the rebels in an attempt to ward them off. He’s not really aiming, but somehow his bullets find their targets without mercy. It’s only when there’s no-one left running towards them that he crouches beside the soldier - Moran, his uniform declares, and a light colonel. “Sir, I’m a doctor,” he says, setting his gun on the ground within easy reach and opening his kit.
Moran’s face is covered in second and third degree burns. All John can do to help is to douse the wounds with antiseptic, cover them with gauze and hope that the man can survive long enough to get back to a medical tent. These are not sanitary conditions by any means, but he has to do what he can with what he has available.
He’s reaching for another bit of gauze when it happens. There’s a sharp retort and he feels the bullet rip through flesh and muscle, leaving behind a fiery pain. He’s bent over his patient, unable to remember how he got there. Moran’s eyes are wide as he meets John’s gaze.
The world seems to gain a measure of unreality as he fumbles for the gauze. He has a patient. That is more important than any wound. His shoulder throbs in time with his heartbeat and suddenly his hand is slick with blood - his or Moran’s, he can’t tell.
Unsanitary, he thinks, and tries to grab a clean cloth but his hand stops obeying his commands. A spray of bullets shoots tiny dervishes of sand into the air beside him. He should really do something about that.
He should...
Shock, he realises. He’s in shock.
He grits his teeth and reaches for his gun - not his patient? - but it’s not there. No. Moran has it. He sees the rhythmic pulse of the man’s finger on the trigger. Once, twice, three times in succession and then the shooting stops.
“Doctor?” Moran asks.
While John registers the question, he’s incapable of responding.
Please...
His vision’s narrowing to a tunnel and he’s feeling dizzy, tired.
Please God...
Anaemia. Shoulder wound must be...
I’m not ready to die...
His mind gutters and winks out before he can complete his mental diagnosis.
A promotion to major and a medical discharge with full honours.
That’s what they tell him when he wakes, like it’s supposed to give him some measure of comfort that he gets to go home. It doesn’t. He’s supposed to stay here, stick it out for a bit longer, and go home when the rest of his company does. He’s not supposed to wake up to find his own body has turned against him.
He’s not supposed to walk off a plane at Heathrow with a bloody cane.
He’s not supposed to be broken.
John’s assigned to a halfway house that’s meant to give him some sort of stability while he searches for a job and tries to fit into a civilian life. He’s assigned a therapist who stares at him like she thinks she knows him, when she has no bloody clue.
He’s assigned a life here. Here is his room - temporary, always remember that. Here is his laptop - besides the clothes on his back, the Browning in his drawer and the bloody cane the only damned thing he owns. Here is his stupid attempt at trying to live a civilian life.
‘Write something’, his therapist says. ‘It’ll help.’
He hears her words every time he opens the laptop to stare at the blank screen.
What is he supposed to write? That he’s glad to be ‘home?’ He isn’t. Somewhere between gunshots and explosions, London lost the feeling of home he’d used to associate with it. It’s dull. Boring. It’s nothing more than an ordinary city in an ordinary, boring country.
When the words finally come, they’re obvious. This is the truth. This is his life now. Assigned and stamped with the bloody medical discharge notice.
He was a POW. He was injured in war. Now he’s here, trying to fit into a civilian - boring - life that feels two sizes too small.
‘Nothing happens to me.’
FIN
x-posted to: dark_aegis and sherlockbbc