Noise. Dust. Screams. Red. Heat.

The world seemed to tilt over its own head as John frantically worked to save the life of the soldier in front of him. Bullet to the femoral artery, (luckily it was just a graze, but it was still a major artery) and he was bleeding out fast. Sand wafted up into John's eyes as his ears were bombarded by the loud cries of dying men and the boom of artillery fire as the Taliban raged unmercifully against them.

John's unit had been brought to a tiny Afghan village that, (or so they were told) was not very sympathetic to the crazed plan that the Taliban wrought and were willing to help rebels and British forces, not to mention that they had wounded of their own in desperate need of treatment. Without hesitation, John and his fellow RAMC men had gone unblinkingly into the village to answer the pleading, helpless cries of injured rebels.

It hadn't been more than three minutes when the all-too familiar burst of explosions sounded, and John realised it was all an ambush.

He pressed a cloth bandage against the young soldier's wound, mind going mile a minute as he tried to think of a way to treat him so he wouldn't die out on him. The boy - because really, he couldn't have been more than twenty-two, so yes, he was a boy - looked up at him with clear fear in his eyes, fear of that ever-approaching oblivion known as Death, but John tied a tourniquet with a fresh bandage over the wound, administered some hefty painkillers, and somehow knew the soldier would come out alive.

Then pain.

Burning hot, absolutely searing pain erupted in his shoulder, and John fell to the ground from the sheer force of it. He risked a glance at the afflicted area and winced at the sight of bright crimson blood - his blood - trickling out from a wound in his shoulder. He could see the muscle was torn, shrapnel embedded in his skin, and wondered just how long it would be until he died of blood loss. He gritted his teeth, grabbed some tools from his medical kit, and desperately began stitching up the wound.

The rest was a haze.

Dimly he saw one of the nurses - Bill Murray, his rattled brain offered - sprint towards him with a grim look of terror on his face and scoop him up by the legs just as a bullet whizzed right past his ears. John absentmindedly knew that if the bullet in his shoulder didn't kill him, that one surely would have done the trick.

Murray, bless his soul, had the foresight to make sure John and the soldier he had been treating were both transported safely back to camp, an action he was positive saved both their lives. When the two arrived they were immediately taken to triage, and John narrowly escaped death in emergency surgery. Afterward John had to be flown back to base and receive additional treatment, and it was there the doctors told him a) he was a lucky son of a gun to be alive, b) the soldier he'd been treating was doing just fine, and c) he had a tremor in his hand that ensured he could never be in the RAMC again.

When John succumbed to a violent three-week-long fever after that bombshell that left his health in tatters and found out about his limp from a bloody psychosomatic leg, he didn't feel like a lucky son of a gun.

He felt crushed.

The first person to see John when he was cleared for visitors at the base was Murray. John looked at him, surprised, when he opened the door and grinned at John.

"How the hell did you get here?"

Murray shrugged. "Just about begged and compromised and negotiated with Sholto for a week straight. Knew I had to see how you were." His eyes narrowed. "You look like shit."

John smiled mirthlessly. "Tends to happen when you get shot. And why are you really here? Don't give me that Sholto bull, he would never let you leave camp without good reason. You're our best nurse." A twinge of pain flickered through John when he said our, remembering that he was no longer allowed to say that. Thankfully Murray didn't notice, only shifted nervously side to side on his feet like a schoolboy. "I've got good news, bad news, and urgent news. Which one do you need to hear first?"

The doctor grimaced and adjusted his shoulder on the hospital bed, "Good."

Murray reached into his fatigues, looking furtively around the room, and pulled out an all-too-familiar-looking pistol. John immediately recognised it as his Sig. "I was able to smuggled this out. Figured you might like it, especially since, y'know." He padded forward with a wide smile and placed it into John's open hand, who took it gratefully. He looked up at Murray with gratitude in his eyes. "Thanks, mate."

The nurse took a step back, cheery grin faded. "You ready for the bad news?" He seemed rather uncomfortable, and John steeled himself mentally.

"I'm so sorry, but there was an, ah, incident. Involving your sister-in-law. She was in a cab on the way home and the driver didn't see the black ice that spun the cab into a tree. She and the driver died upon impact."

John felt numb. Clara dead. Oh, Harry… He could sense his mouth moving but wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying. "Harry? How is she?"

Murray winced. "Landlady found her unresponsive in her flat after she found out. She called 999, but it was too late. She had swallowed a cup of bleach, dead before she hit the floor."

The once-proud army captain slumped back into his bed. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know what to think. Hell, he didn't even know what to feel. "Shit."

Murray let out a humourless chuckle. "That's not the half of it. Are you good for the urgent news?"

A feeling of ominous anxiety curled up like a snake in John's gut. "It's Henry, isn't it?" he asked, with the monotonous voice of a person who's been faced with much more than they can be possibly asked to handle.

The nurse winced. "You mean your nephew?"

John felt a pang of guilt at the word. He had met Henry when his sister first adopted him about two years before - a little tot who had a dimple in one cheek and light brown curls, along with an adorable smile. That was before John went on his second tour to Afghanistan, and in the brief, happy period when Harry had forsaken the bottle.

Of course, it didn't last very long, and John has much too preoccupied with trying to not get shot - look how well that turned out - to try to reconnect with Harry, much less see his nephew. "How old is he now? Four, isn't it?"

"I'm not sure, I just got sent here because your sister-in-law doesn't have any kin with an interest in taking Henry and you're his uncle, so the foster system needs to know if you want to keep him. Of course, you don't -" He silenced himself with a warning glare from the fallen soldier in the bed.

An internal battle began to rage inside of John. He was a doctor who couldn't be a doctor, a soldier who couldn't be a soldier, a Captain who couldn't be a Captain. He was invalidated, had a cane, a tremor, a broken spirit with broken dreams. He didn't even have any income besides the pitiful pension that would come when John was finally shipped off the merry ol' England.

In other words? John Watson was not parent material.

An image of Harry floated into his brain, an image before the drink took over and when she was smiling, happy, blond hair gleaming with her glowing demeanour. She's gone.

Dammit. Henry was his dead sister's son, and no matter how much the two had fought and argued and slammed doors on each other, family was blasted family and John knew he would never be able to look at himself in the mirror if he abandoned his only nephew now.

Biology be damned.

So he squared his jaw, steeled his posture, and met Murray with a firm gaze. "I'll take him."