A little Copper prequel. I wrote this about a year ago, and published to AO3, but I wasn't satisfied so I rewrote it completely. Hope you enjoy! There isn't enough Copper fic out there. Just in time for the S2 premiere!
The story of how Robert Morehouse lost his leg was funny if you didn't think about it. Not funny ha-ha, but funny-ironic, which was the same thing after a few shots and a good screw. He'd told the tale at parties before, getting a raucous laugh from fellow military men and pitiful grimaces from sober ladies. Sober ladies always pitied him, which is why he never let one hang around too long.
Robert's leg, the one still intact, was almost shot off in a skirmish somewhere in Virginia three months prior to the loss of his other. He'd gotten the heel of his boot stuck in a gap the rock, seen a bullet fly straight past and tumble down the rock face. Lucky boy, he was, for surviving that. It'd have been a hell of a lot less poetic if that was the incident that did take the leg. He'd have been no hero that way, just a man with a bit of stuck footwear standing between a tumble bullet and a clean escape. It would've been gritty, required a fabricated story for the papers and the uptown broads.
But fortune didn't like to smile twice on the same pair of legs. It only smiled on his social status, as he lost his leg in one of the most heroic defeats of the War thus far. Gettysburg. It was a good fight- a big victory; or so he was told, and so he told others.
Prior to that definitive battle, Gettysburg was just another god-forsaken town in the shit middle of nowhere. They were under heavy fire and the orders of General Meade. There was smoke everywhere and when the bullet struck, he'd cried like a bitch.
Robert had seen enough of those same bullets mate with the limbs of his men to know what happened next. Bite on a rag and break out the saw, boys. This one's coming off. In the past, he'd stayed a safe distance away as decent men cried out in pain. A lot of them didn't make it home, what with infections and blood loss and the never-ending rush to move on and move out and march, march, march. Some of them screamed out their prayers like God Himself was the one cutting them open. Others whispered their last words like they were telling a scary story, their eyes fixed on people who weren't there. Some who hadn't been there for a very long time.
The Catholics made a bigger production of it. The Irish were apparently big fans of death. Wakes were a big event, what with the proper cleaning and burial. Some of them got real worked up when that didn't happen. A few Negroes were sympathetic; Freeman was one of them. Once, when he couldn't find a coin for the dead man's eyes, he popped a button off his own jacket. When asked why he didn't pop the button off the dead man's jacket instead, Freeman scoffed.
"Wouldn't be respectful," he said, wiping his hands on a handkerchief. "Wouldn't be right."
It was enough to drive a man to drink, which they all did quite a bit. He could only imagine what it was like to sleep in those tents. He had his own quarters, even when they were on the road, but he could hear the men playing cards, spinning yarns and singing songs deep into the night. He often caught himself whistling spirituals and reels at breakfast, wondering how he knew them so well.
Growing up, he'd been warned against these very men.
"The Irish are worse than the coloreds," his roommate at Harvard said once. "They'll drink your scotch and fuck your wife while her sister robs you blind."
Robert had just nodded his throbbing head and pretended to read the paper. That roommate was now a senator in Boston, dealing with Irish undesirables by the daily shipload.
The fight in Gettysburg had been calculated. The Rebs had been predictable that day, of all days. They were tense, under tight orders. He'd called out to his men like Prince Hal.
"Once more unto the breach, boys!" he joked. "Give 'em hell!"
They did. Robert fired on a few graybacks, unable to aim well in the thick air. A Negro named Russell fell at his feet, clutching his chest. Robert only glanced down for a split second. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground, too.
Everything went slow after that. A bit fuzzy. The world took on a creamy blur at the edges, like the last drink of the evening. The battle noises dulled, as if he were hearing it from underwater.
Someone was yelling, one of the Irish, but he couldn't make out a face. Calling him sir. Major, you're hit. Major, can you hear me?
The world went dark.
When Robert woke, he was on fire. Arms, chest; hell, the world even looked red. He screamed bloody murder, tried to sit up, but strong hands pinned him.
"Hold him there," boomed a voice from his feet.
Two hands obeyed, one holding him at the sternum and the other grasping both wrists above his head. The blood began to pump again, and the scene slowly came into view. He was in a tent, the battle raging somewhere beyond. His captors came into sudden, too-sharp focus: Freeman, and an Irishman name of Corcoran. He'd put money on Corcoran when the men boxed and wrestled. A brute of a man. He'd been a hell of a guy when the riots broke out, a hell of a guy in the boxing ring, and he had a hell of a grip on Robert's extremities.
"Easy Major," Corcoran growled. He was hurt himself, with a nasty cut above his eyebrow caked with mud, blood and sweat. His was the voice Robert heard in his last moments of consciousness.
In another cot, someone was singing. A low, mournful ballad. It sounded like "When Johnny comes Marching Home," but the words were all wrong.
Where are the eyes that looked so mild, haroo, haroo...
It was almost undetectable, a soft bass voice. Robert's vision was blurring again, but his hearing was sharp now. The imaginary flames licked hire, setting his torso ablaze. He heard a scream.
...Guns and drums and drums and guns, haroo, haroo...
Robert realized the scream had been his own. He tried to focus on the song.
We have guns and drums and drums and guns, the enemy nearly slew ya, but darlin dear, ya look so queer... Johnny I hardly knew ya.
He felt claustrophobic. He'd heard this song before. The next verse. No. Please no.
Where are the legs with which you'd run, haroo, haroo...
Robert choked. He prayed against character, hoped against hope, wished for the smothering darkness but had no such luck. He bit down on the rag and listened with tortured ears as the doctor and his saw fueled the flames.
Note: I do not own the rights to BBC Copper, nor to the folk song 'Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye." The tune is the grim predecessor to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," a popular song during the American Civil War, thought to have been first published in 1863.
"Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye" was an Irish anti-war song from (supposedly) the 1820s, when Irishmen were recruited to work for and defend the East India Trading Comapny. The song tells of a young man forced into service, abandoning his wife and child, who winds up severely maimed and forced to beg.
It was rewritten by an Irish American who felt the song deserved a more chipper makeover, and quickly caught on as a world-famous patriotic tune in the Union.