Salt and sand

A/N: Ever so often I crawl out of my fiction-induced stupor to write something that seems to affect me more deeply that I thought. BBC's Our Girl is one of those. I binged watched Series 1 and found myself riveted. Then I went onto Series 2 and hated the damned soap-opera-ish feel of a love-triangle that shouldn't have even been allowed to exist. The only thing that stayed unchanged was how I couldn't get good ol' Captain James and his incredibly devoted pint-sized medic out of my head.

I hadn't a well-formed idea of how this was going to go down, only that I wanted to dig deeper into James's lack of emotional involvement and how Molly changes it all throughout the series. It turned out to be a collection of random scenes that took a different turn somehow and ended where I least expected.

Not sorry. (and that's the beauty of fanfic)

All mistakes are my own.

oOo

When Captain Charles James looks at the world face down on his stomach, Geraint Smith is a mere, unmoving speck of dark brown and red in the arid landscape.

Insignificant in the larger scheme of things, in the war-torn place that's ruddy Afghan.

There is no awareness of how much time has gone by, save for the number of rocks he'd gone past.

The distance is short but interminable. Easy to cover with his usual long strides, unimaginably impossible to cross in a hostile area without the threat of snipers or buried mines.

Nothing but time and distance separate him from Smith.

The last ten metres are the hardest to traverse. The panicked, desperate shouts of Two Section have long been swallowed by the eerie silence that seems to exist in only in this purgatory that hasn't deigned to release him from its grasp.

His pants are harsh and loud in his ears, the metallic tang of blood from the shredded flesh of his shins and calves as he hauls them over jagged rock too nauseating to ignore. Then there's the raw scuff of his boots along the sandy surface as he drags the length of his legs along each excruciating metre.

Agony does not even begin to describe the fire that sluices down his spine with every hitch of his knee propelling him forward. The trail of blood he leaves—dull stains of red dotting the brown, tawny land—is a shining beacon for any tracker.

Fear is now that unerring drillmaster whispering horrid intentions into his head, that terrible keening edge that keeps him going on.

And it has never failed.

'Stay focus, stay alert and stay alive' might be the mantra that he drums unendingly into the lads, but he is unashamed to admit even that even he can't keep that lofty piece of advice right now. From time to time, he tells them to be brilliant because they need to be. It's a necessary skill and mind-set each and every one of those tossers will learn soon enough if they want to stay alive.

Before he even reaches Geraint, he knows that the poor sod is dead, as limp as a ragdoll trampled and done in by the unrelenting heat.

The massive bleed-out from the soldier's bullet-riddled neck is the obvious clue.

The important details—Smith's torn flesh, the awkward sprawl of death—suddenly come into focus as he exhales hard. It's akin to jolting upright in bed from a semi-conscious state after that stretch of time when he commando-crawled himself into a narrow, condensed world where only the thought of never leaving a man behind existed.

His assault rifle hangs awkwardly in the crook of his arm. His rucksack's half-emptied of the things he'll need to save anyone. His ribs just fucking hurt.

And sand is just…fucking everywhere. Grit in his eyes, dirt in between his toes. In the crease between his eyelids, lodged behind his ears.

Stifling the insane urge to laugh at how little Sandhurst has prepared him for this, James knows that that these two-hundred metres isn't really about getting a fallen soldier to his medic but getting a body back to a weeping mother who can at least receive a folded flag for her son's short-lived service to Her Majesty.

How bloody, fucking unfair, innit?

The bonds between men are made stronger because of death rather than life. Two Section will, as he instinctively knows, after they mourn, be a better, well-oiled cog turning in the massive military machine because someone has paid for this in blood.

As soon as this philosophical whine surfaces, James shuts it down, knowing that it'll simply edge him into a place where messy emotions start to take over—a place where he has absolutely no intention of venturing into.

"Geraint, mate?" James finds himself croaking out, laying a shaking hand on the fallen soldier's shoulder as though he were still a living, breathing soul. "I'm bringing you back. You'll see your mother again."

Then he tells the lads that the body has been retrieved, amazed that the salt he suddenly tastes on his face isn't just sweat but falling tears making silent tracks through the thick layer of grit on his face.

James hunches under the weight of the body, unable to stop the shudders from wracking his shoulders as the enormity of what has just transpired starts to sink in. Suddenly, he needs something tangible to hold onto—an inarticulate promise of some sort or perhaps a larger sign that fate hasn't had it all written out for him and the lads yet—that he can't find under the desolate desert sky or in the disbelieving silence that greets him when he finally returns to security of Bastion.

The answer doesn't come until much later as he stands over the flag-draped casket.

oOo

A rare smile creases Dr. Hattenstone's stern visage.

"Captain James, you appear to have competently managed your recovery. You have reassured me of the steps you have actively sought in various psychological assessments and the physical fitness reports from Headley Court put you in good stead to be restored to active service."

The approval means everything.

He stands and shakes the doctor's proffered hand, staring at the medical report marked 'Confidential'.

Cleared for immediate deployment.

oOo

Jealous, childish anger, if it were given a label, sounds like a juvenile sulk that is unbecoming of an officer in the British Army.

Yet in front of the Mastiff, the vallon sweeping back and forth, James finally manages to cast off the disillusionment that hadn't let go of its vise-like grip since the inadvertent revelation of Dawes's and Smurf's chummy trip in Newport.

It isn't Dawes's fault. None of it is. On paper, his men's personal lives are their own to fuck up, the storm-in-a-teacup drama none of his bloody business whatsoever. His only business, as Captain, is to not get involved.

Not emotionally, not even socially. The retreat of his tent—apart from the stag and medic tents—provides that safe distance. Physical separation, should he wish it, especially if the deliberate enforcement of separation by rank isn't working too well.

But like a besotted idiot with a crush that'd sneaked up on him, he finds himself entangled in a game of emotions that shouldn't be allowed to surface during this six months at all.

In fact, he thought he'd learned the price of getting emotionally involved by the time Molly Dawes joined the ranks of Two Section as the replacement medic. His fourth tour had already proven to be both his salvation and his nightmare. It has been his only blessed way to skip out on the mess of divorce proceedings turned nasty and needlessly complicated, exacerbated only by a feisty cockney voice that rises high above the cheeky lads' cruel taunts. Without the slightest hesitation, he'd snapped at the cockwombles to sort themselves out then threatened to lob Dawes out of the plane, grimly convinced that it wouldn't take much to make her break.

His scoffing prediction had almost come true.

Dawes had paved her own road to perdition as she fumbled her way through the first few weeks, her ineptness almost painful to watch.

But not quite.

Somehow she had always managed to dig in, though not without an exasperating determination to take his advice of winning hearts and minds a little too seriously, then turned a sharp corner by stupidly crawling into a minefield to save a critically-injured Smurf. He'd shouted himself hoarse, helpless to do anything but hope that the cover he and the rest of the section provided would have been enough.

After a series of events at the FOB and Dawes's time spent in Newport, he'd found himself slipping down the slope that led down a place he'd rather not examine, yet unable to stop that slide into fondness and affection for a medic whom he now struggles to keep at some distance.

Perhaps that should have been sufficient warning.

His insistence on keeping any sharp emotion out of things here is slowly being overwritten by a growing mental conflict that alternates between the memories of Smurf's femoral bleed out and Dawes's unswerving dedication to a platoon (and its commanding officer) who frankly hadn't quite deserved it in the first few weeks of her arrival.

As terrifying as the loss of control, of the ironclad grip on detachment is proving to be, it's the constant reminder of loss and the bloody memories that he wants to keep at bay. Geraint Smith's slack face is starting to make consistent appearances in his night terrors. It's enough to disintegrate the monochromatic canvas that he's carefully woven on this tour to the point where he can't see straight when Dawes and Smurf are mentioned. Yet every resolution that he makes each hour to keep Dawes on her feet and away from him is fruitless when all she does is—

"Nothing happened with Smurf. But at least now I know."

Dawes wants a quiet moment that he isn't prepared for. It's the wrong place, the wrong time, despite a part of him craving that same conversation.

James keeps his sights on the unmoving form below the sheet. "Know what?"

"Well I never thought that you would look at someone like me. I thought that you were out of my league."

His feet stop of their own accord. "What are you trying to say, Dawes?"

"I'm just saying...I'm fond of you, Sir. And I wanted to tell you in case we get to that sheet, and someone detonates it and we're blown to smithereens."

Her soft confession has his world spinning off its axis, then exploding in a prism of colour so at odds with the dry brown of the dirt track. His heart rate spikes sharply upward as he debates between scoffing at the audacity of that statement and being impressed with unbelievable courage it must have taken her to say that.

The momentary loss of words thankfully doesn't last long, not when he's painfully aware of the rest of the section fanned out and tensely trigger-happy.

"Let's continue this conversation when we're back at Brize Norton, shall we?"

"Do you love me?" Her voice is shaky with uncertainty.

Shocked into silence, he whips around only to see her ashen face, vallon frozen at the edge of the sheet.

There's suddenly a fuckload of things he wants to say to her. Blame he wants to assign her for the confusion that he can't seem to make sense of each time she's near, the inexplicable anger when he'd learnt about her in Newport, or her sheer impertinence of even bringing up a conversation that shouldn't even exist between a Commanding Officer and his subordinate, or the number of regulations they would be breaching if he didn't put a damn stop to this right fucking now.

He has no clear answer here, only righteous, military-sanctioned justification for what he's about to throw at her before a bloodied hand reaches for the vallon.

The harshest form of a shutdown.

"You will speak no more of this matter, Dawes."

oOo

"What you doing up there, Dawes?"

He stops and smirks as he watches her stifle a surprised shriek, propping his foot up on the middle rung of the ladder and the other resting casually on the one above.

"Sir!"

"0030. Should be hitting the pit by now." He makes a show of checking his watch. "Unless PT isn't tiring enough. Or maybe this is a sign that I'll need to change it—"

"You're shittin' me, boss," she mumbles with a look of disbelief on her face.

The day is too raw for jokes.

Yet James finds himself trying to lighten it all for them both after the way it'd rained hell and brimstone, from the stunning confession of this pint-sized woman and the utter, utter boldness when she'd asked if he loved her, to his wordless answer when he'd placed his forehead against hers and wiped those tears away when Sohail crashed after his extraordinary but terrifying revelation.

"It's beautiful up here," she confesses as she looks at the stars. "I like it as much as you like your paddling pool."

He wants to laugh at the absurd comparison. And after the day they've both had, laughter is an unthinkable commodity until Dawes shows up with it.

But with Dawes, it's easy to surrender to it. To her.

After brief hesitation, he glances around, then climbs to the top of the wooden structure to join her, taking comfort in the quiet camp and the darkness that blankets them with an intimacy he hadn't known he craved until she'd called into question everything—especially the army regulations—that he'd held high and above reproach.

In all his tours here, he'd never taken the time to look at the night sky, too happily foregoing the sight of the heavens spread before him for the constant work and strategic meetings that stretch way into the wee hours of the morning.

The light-hearted atmosphere settles into something heavier, more awkward. But Dawes still doesn't speak minutes after he hauls himself up next to her.

They break the silence simultaneously.

"Boss, I should hit the—"

"Dawes, I—"

She sighs, then nimbly swings herself over the ladder, avoiding his eyes as she does so. "I should go, Boss. Long day, as you said."

It's the near-imperceptible sad defeat underlying the quiet goodnight that he hears; that much attuned he has become to Dawes's odd inflections and incomprehensible English. Only then does James realise this is as difficult for Dawes as it is for him where he'd once assumed her flagrant disobedience of his orders was simply an extension of her general disregard for army regulations.

She is fighting this attraction as much as he had been, already honouring his terse command earlier in the day. Even as she's making him second-guess his words, his own command and his ability to see this tour through, James wishes for a repeat of the day, those few precious minutes where he could have spoken differently.

Because all it'd taken was a span of a few hours for his entire perception of the rules of engagement to change, thanks to a dying man who inadvertently revealed the target Dawes had become.

"Dawes, stop."

But she doesn't.

He repeats himself softly for fear of waking the camp with this drama of their own making, dismayed that she trudges forward without turning back.

James leaps several rungs of the ladder to catch up with her before hustling her through the flap of his tent, urgently needing to mend the damage that he'd inflicted under the guise of upholding the regulations earlier in the day.

"We're not done," he tells her quietly as he takes a step closer to where she stands, wanting to memorise the imprint of her in his tent, all Westham blue and purple against drab olive and camouflage.

"Nothing's changed, boss."

He thinks he still hears the sliver of hope in her ragged, uncertain whisper as he cynically laughs at the irony of their conversation. In this reversal of roles, he's now confronting her as she'd done earlier, resurrecting a topic that should have been dead and buried on his own orders.

"Everything has." His answer is sure this time, despite the U-turn he'd just done.

Sohail's revelation had frightened the life out of him as much as it had Dawes and the psychological impact of shared trauma aside, it'd merely hammered home the point that he ought to give up this particular fight on a different front.

Dawes snorts elegantly, briefly breaking the spell. "If you mean I'm now the Taliban's target, then that's—"

He interrupts her unapologetically, crowding her space. "Do you love me?"

A brief glance downward and he sees her hands—her clenched fists—shaking. It's instinct to take her smaller ones in his and place a kiss on her knuckles before he allows himself the luxury of lightly moving his hands upwards until they curl around her shoulders.

"Boss—"

"Not here, not now," he whispers, willing her to hold his unflinching stare. "Answer me."

Her hesitation lasts several long seconds until she turns her green eyes to tell him honestly, "All I wanted was for you to be the last thing I see."

Her deflection is a breathtaking admission on its own and the last thing he remembers as distance and daylight between them disappear.

He tells her "Ditto" and then they're plastered against each other, giving into blind fumbles and rushed kisses that push him beyond the capacity for thought and reason, roughly circling the tent until they reach the bed at the far end of it. Dawes's knees hit the edge of the thin mattress and he willingly follows her down, using his weight to pin her where he needs her to be as they work out their own conflicted thoughts with physical, graceless movements.

He hooks his fingers down the waistband of her shorts, then shucks them carelessly on the sandy ground, uncaring that she's mirroring his actions with his own pants. The frenzied assault he launches on her clothes and then on her skin is a surprise, at least at the back of his mind. That Dawes is returning the favour with every bit of enthusiasm helps validates it somehow.

The war in Afghan, the mission, the tour, his role as Bossman—he forgets it all for once. Surrenders instead, to an enormous need that would sound daft if he gave words to it. Their feverish coupling, born in the murky pool of forbidden desire, comes to fruition where rank is relegated to a personnel report forgotten at the bottom of his drawer. The press of her short nails into his back, his first press into her are surreal moments that take up all the space in his head and replace clarity with chaos.

His focus is only Molly Dawes, the young woman who wants him as much as he wants her, who begs for more with her legs clamped around his thighs as he changes his rhythm to elicit the reaction he wants. Onward and higher, heading far beyond what he could have ever conceived when they'd first lined up at Brize for the start of the tour.

They crash spectacularly against the rocks into a blissful oblivion that he only emerges from when he feels her uneven breaths whispering along the grinding pulse in his neck.

He pulls her closer, his lips brushing her forehead.

On his fingertips, he feels the coarse grains of Afghan sand that lingers in her hair and tastes the salt of her tears on her cheeks with his tongue.

It's the salt and sand that he remembers. That inescapable nightmare that now makes him happy.