Title: Soldier Boy
Rating: PG
Characters: Holmes, Watson, some Murray
Disclaimer: Will. Never. Be. Mine. DAMN.
Word Count: 2,300+
Summary: For 'kcscribbler' whose request was this: Think you could pull off something where Holmes was in Afghanistan too - but not Character death, please please - whether as a medic (instead of/in addition to/totally unrelated to Murray, possibly for monetary reasons - money was a big reason many men went into the service then) or as a soldier (either on the field/during the retreat - maybe where'd Murray get the packhorse?/in the hospital in Peshawar/whatever grabs you)?
A/N: I sort of just wrote this straight, hoping the fic would sort of write itself as I went along, so I wouldn't say it was my best work. This is my second crazy AU fic offer request and I hope it is received well. Written whilst listening to the Sherlock Holmes 2009 movie soundtrack. Cheers, mates!
~*~
"You're lucky, extracting rock debris is far less life threatening than if you have been hit by the actual bullet that caused it," Watson remarked absently as his hands steadily removed another of several dozen miniscule chips, among the much larger pieces, of stone that had been blown apart by rifle fire and embedded itself all across the soldier's left side, making the flesh there look for all the world like grated cheese, although admittedly, a much less dire wound than the army surgeon had seen since he had taken up his commission.
"Lucky would have been escaping without any injury, much less seven stitches in my leg and my side being reduced to ground beef," the young private bit out as Watson's forceps removed yet another rock fragment.
"I'm afraid that luck out here is rather different than how the concept is perceived anywhere else, my boy," Watson replied, repressing the sigh that would have implied his weariness rather than the humour he wished to purvey.
The private's eye narrowed at the placating title. "Lectures don't become someone who is barely two years my elder, Doctor."
Watson smiled mostly out of bemusement for the strength of conviction in the other man's statement though settled instead on humouring the injured man rather than questioning him. "Nagging is a privilege that comes with the venerable prefix, I'm afraid."
The private muttered something indistinct as he closed his eyes and buried his head on the thin pillow he was resting upon.
Watson frowned. "Excuse me?"
No answer or clarification came.
"Private?" Watson moved to touch his hand briefly against the younger man's forehead and hissed when he immediately found it to be hot with mild fever. "Damn," he muttered to himself. He hadn't noticed before because he had assumed the sweat was caused by the stress of the extraction under only very light sedatives (their stronger medicines were running low and in dire need to be conserved, so the private had agreed to bear the brunt of pain while entirely conscious). "Murray," he called his orderly, who leaned through the privacy curtain in order to converse with him, "I need some clean water in order to wash out this private's wounds. He's already got an infection."
Murray's face pinched in sympathy, eyes radiating silent apology. "There isn't any more to be had. We've already used up our ration for the day."
Watson cursed quietly to himself, although several times more vulgar and in the few harsh words of Arabic he had picked up since he had been shipped here. "How they expect me to keep these soldiers alive when they limit my access to clean water is beyond me. They are effectively crippling my ability to save my patients. Here," Watson tossed Murray the few coins he still possessed, "use that to buy extra. If Gibbs gives you any trouble, remind him who allowed him to keep half his money when he lost betting on himself in the last boxing tournament and who exactly he lost to."
Murray flashed him a quick smirk before ducking out of the medical tent to carry out his orders.
The private stirred, seeming somewhat groggy, grey eyes silver bright with fever and several damp locks of coal black hair clinging to his forehead. "Are you done, Doctor?"
"No, there is still some debris and I will have to be thorough in flushing out the wounds. You have caught an infection," Watson informed him curtly. He would give comfort to his patients when he could, but only after they were fully informed of their condition.
The private's lips twisted in a grim smile. "My luck prevails."
"Perhaps you should have considered that before choosing a career in the army," Watson pointed out.
The private snorted. "It certainly wasn't my idea."
"Your father's?" Watson inquired, starting back on removing the rock fragments.
"My bank account's. Trust me doctor, if it was in any way up to me, I would be somewhere else, being useful," the private growled.
"And you don't think serving your Queen and country is in anyway useful?" Watson questioned, more curious than remonstrative. Scores of men, including himself, had joined the army for practical and monetary reasons. That didn't mean he did not believe in what he was doing, however and wondered how any man could face the ravages of war without that steadfast belief.
"No, I do not think it particularly useful when I explicitly warn my corporal that I had seen signs of Ghazi activity in the area, only to be laughed at and dismissed because it was based off an analysis of horse urine and thus get shot at and was forced to watch one of the men in my section die with an enormous hole in his stomach," the private stated dully, an imperceptible shudder wracking through his thin frame, disguised as a reaction to Watson pulling the last fragment of rock out from a jagged scrap of pale skin.
"Private Allen James," Watson murmured quietly.
"Yes," the private confirmed just as quietly.
They were both spared the need to continue the conversation when Murray arrived with the water. Watson poured as much as he dared into a porcelain basin while Murray brought him a new cloth.
"Alright corporal, let's see if we can get that fever down and make something of our own luck."
Watson gently cleaned to wounds and stayed up to monitor the patient's condition, while Murray watched over his three other patients.
"Will you play a game with me?" the private asked suddenly sometime during the night.
Watson blinked the tiredness out of his eyes, glad that at least his patient wasn't falling into delirium even if it meant he would not receive any rest. "Of course. What would you like to play?"
The private swallowed, his breath coming out in a little loud, but steady intervals. "A guessing game."
"Do I go first or you?" Watson asked, assuming the private wished to play the spying game in which one person had to guess what the other was describing.
"I will go first. You only have to say if what I say is true," the private licked his lips as Watson replaced the cloth on his forehead, "or false."
Watson quirked his head to the side. The private was certainly full of curious statements. "Go on," he said.
"You grew up in Edinburgh or somewhere close to it, although relinquished your accent while attending English boarding schools. I wager when your father died, you remained in England to be schooled while your family moved to Australia, most likely to stay with an uncle or some other relative. You have an elder brother somewhere. You have been out here for two years and you write very frequently." He turned perfectly lucid eyes toward Watson. "Am I right?"
"Yes," Watson exclaimed, astounded, "on all counts. But however did you know?"
Grey eyes flicked towards his makeshift, though functioning writing desk. "I can read as well as listen and observe. Someday those skills will earn my bread and butter somewhere that they can be of optimum use and I will no longer have to take orders or do things I am not proud of."
"Do you know where that somewhere is?" Watson asked, for some reason wishing the words to be true, probably as hard as the private himself did.
"No." The private turned his face away, hiding his expression.
"Your fever's down at least. You have a chance at that life yet," Watson said
"Let's not be overhasty. Nevertheless, thank you, Doctor. This is the first time I've ever had stitches done while in the field and didn't feel the need to redo them myself."
"You're welcome. Get some rest." Watson stood to leave for his own cot when he paused and addressed the private once more. "If you are looking to assert yourself somewhere, I suggest London. I attended university there and I promise there is much to see in that city and thousands of interesting people to watch and observe."
"Is that where you are likely to go after you have fulfilled your comission?"
"Perhaps, but I am glad to be here as long as I am needed," Watson answered frankly.
"Strange."
"What?"
"You were being perfectly honest."
"And what is so strange about that?" Watson queried.
"Because it is rare. Go to sleep, Doctor. Heal thyself."
Too exhausted to work his way through the conundrum that was his patient, Watson gave a faint goodbye before retiring to his cot. The next day all his plans of continuing to serve in Her Majesty's Army became forfeit as he was shot simultaneously in the shoulder and leg. Under the Afghanistan sun, he dragged himself as far as he could go before Murray slung him over his shoulder and began to carry him.
"Leave me, Murray," Watson coughed out through the haze of agony. "Leave me or have mercy and shoot me before the Ghazis catch up to us and kill us both."
Murray gritted his teeth and continued to trudge onwards through that godforsaken desert. "It's not in me to refuse an order, sir, but I respect you enough to tell you to go to sodden Hell."
"We're already there, Murray. Can't you feel it? Just leave me here to die. It can't possibly get any worse. Save yourself. You could make it if you weren't carrying a useless and crippled medic."
Watson had simply lost too much blood, so much that he was convinced that any Ghazi could follow the trail of crimson splatters left behind on the torturously bright sands and his consciousness threatened to leave him, perhaps for good, but not before he could hear the muffled pounding of hooves.
"Take it," an almost familiar voice commanded, though Watson couldn't think why it held such authority.
"But where did you—?" his orderly started only to be savagely interrupted.
"The four of us who were wounded prior to the advance had been loaded into a cart well before the retreat had started. The other three are dead. I took the horse, now I'm giving it to you."
"Are you well enough to make the retreat without it? I remember you; Major Watson stitched up your leg just the other day and you had a fever up until early this morning."
"Yes well, I put more faith in the Doctor's healing abilities than my own luck. Take the bloody horse and go. Godspeed."
Next, Murray was whispering to him through the pain that was being increased unbearably by the incomprehensible amount of jostling he was being subjected to.
"Don't worry, sir. You are going to survive this. Just a little further. You'll make it out alive, I promise."
Just a little further turned out to be over forty-five miles to Kandahar and being rerouted from there to Peshuwar in India. Surviving, similarly, turned out to be receiving crippling injuries in his left shoulder and right leg and being struck with enteric fever. But yes, in the end, due to the devotion and courage of his orderly, Murray, he did indeed, make it out alive.
A few months later found Watson in aimless reclusion in the great cesspool which is London until fortune had it that Stamford found him amidst his convalescence and growing need for cheaper lodgings.
"That's a strange thing," remarked his companion, "you are the second man today that has used that expression to me."
"And who was the first?" Watson asked.
"A fellow who is working at the chemical laboratory up at the hospital. Holmes is his name."
Watson froze for a moment at the sound of that name in the same manner he froze at the sound of the gunshot at the start of races and the sound of newspapers rustling and immediately flooded his mind with images and sensations of blood and heat and death and continuous gunfire and cries of the fallen.
Young Stamford looked rather strangely at me over his wineglass. "Do you know the fellow?"
Watson wondered what expression must have been on his face for Stamford to make such an inquiry, although the question was entirely lost to him as a memory, hazy and colorless like one worn away by many years since childhood rose unbidden into his mind, shoulder and leg throbbing with a not so phantom pain.
Hands, four or six or ten, simply not two, were lifting him and pulling him over what smelt like a copiously sweating horse. He didn't have time to feel grateful for the pressure off of his wounds when suddenly he was bumping against the sides of the horse and his wounds were screaming once more from the pain of it.
Voices far off and away were conversing, but he couldn't quite make any of it out over the din of pain in his mangled limbs, but his ears, one of the parts of him blessedly undamaged, continued to function even if his brain was not fully comprehending it.
"That way, East. Be mindful of the raiders. Have you a gun on you?"
"Yes—wait!" The other man must have been starting to leave. "What's your name, private?"
"Sherlock Holmes."
"How can I ever repay you?"
"Don't worry about that, but if you wish, you can find me in London." And suddenly the voice was much closer, whispering. "Look me up someday, Doctor."
And then it was Murray's voice whispering. "Don't worry, sir. You are going to survive this. Just a little further…"
"A medical student, I suppose?" Watson said dazedly and remembering still further about a late night complaint about stitches.
"No—I have no idea, but don't get your hopes up, Doctor. You don't know Sherlock Holmes yet, perhaps you would not care for him as a constant companion."
Perhaps not, Watson thought, but he did owe him. He owed him everything and Watson was always one to gladly fulfill his debts. Besides, he could stand to have a small amount of curiosities in his life.