AN: So, this is the sequel to My Soul to Keep. I realize it's been nearly a year since I finished the other story, but I finally have something to write!
The war still trudges on, and John Michael Dorian still attempts to lead the rebellion, but when a freak lightning storm causes him to switch lives with a JD from a time and place where the war doesn't exist—yet—the rebel hero must make a choice: prevent a country-wide catastrophe or allow the inevitable.
I understand if this isn't your thing. This is an AU, after all, and to top that off there's a bit of science fiction thrown in. But I promise it won't get too wild. No aliens or people sprouting extra limbs. *wanders into vague JD day dream where three-armed, four-legged people walk around, waving to the seven-armed mailman* Uh-huh.... Well, this is sort of the prologue and the beginning of chapter one rolled into the first update, just because things were getting a little long. Please be patient with me. I'm currently student teaching, and my updates may be few and far between, but I do know where this story is going--I just need to get it down on paper...then on my computer. So, on with the fic, then!
My Soul to Take
Prologue:
John Michael Dorian wakes with a scream, an electric current still sizzling through his veins. Something is wrong.
It is dark, which isn't unnatural. The bunker is generally pitch black at midnight, save for the few nightlights left on for the various children scattered around the place. This dark is unfamiliar. But the shapes in the dark are what worry the young man the most. He doesn't recognize them—or . . . maybe he does. It's strange. Every bone in his body screams warning, but his mind tells him there is something familiar and almost comforting about this place.
A muffled noise startles him, and his hand immediately goes to his pillow, where he knows Perry keeps a gun every night. His fingers graze soft cotton, nothing like the rough, torn pillows he is used to, and when he leaps to his feet, it is from a mattress, not a cot, onto carpeted floor, not cold concrete. He is warm, a sensation he has almost completely forgotten about outside the arms of a certain older doctor. And speaking of which....
"Perry?" he whispers, sucking in a breath as he reaches blindly in the direction of the bed he recently vacated. A bed? he thinks with longing. I haven't slept in a bed since—
Something across the room jiggles and squeaks, making him jump and slam back against a hard object that slides and topples over before he can get his balance. What feel like wooden drawers dig into his spine and his ribs, and he grimaces, collapsing to the floor himself and shielding his head from various small projectiles that shatter on impact.
It feels like the fighting all over again; broken glass and shrapnel crunching underfoot and cutting through boots right to the soles of the feet, sounds of thudding and cracking so loud his ears pop and ring for several hours afterward, terrified screams of desperate people trying to find shelter or loved ones or anyone
"JD?" a familiar voice says drowsily, and he forgets the pain in his side and back for a moment, carefully making his way to his feet.
"Turk?" he asks with more relief in his voice than he will ever admit to. "Turk, what's going on?"
"'Nilla Bear, it's three in the morning. I gotta work in two hours," Turk replies.
The rebel leader's stomach lurches, and the feeling that something is terribly wrong takes its place in his mind once again. "Work?" he asks in a small voice.
The light flickers on, and after a moment of adjusting to the light, both men stand in a shocked daze.
"JD, what the hell?"
"What the fuck is going on?"
John Michael Dorian is in a room in an apartment building that had been destroyed years ago.
0 o 0 o 0
JD wakes with a scream, the pain of cramped muscles and that uncomfortable tingly sensation from knocking his funny bone too hard lingering for a moment longer before slowly disappearing from his limbs. He breathes in and out very slowly, attempting to even out the breath still hitching in his throat. He is shivering, which is strange. Carla has an unnatural hatred of the cold and usually keeps the thermostat in the apartment set at seventy-nine degrees at night. He will have to talk to the landlord in the morning, though he doesn't envy Turk's toes at the moment.
"Some nightmare," he murmurs to himself, starting to ease himself back onto the bed.
"Must've been," a deep voice says from beside him.
JD jumps up from the bed with a shout of surprise, his feet slipping on the concrete—concrete?—causing him to fall. He crawls backwards on his hands and feet, expecting to find a wall at some point. Instead, he meets what feels like a hospital curtain, his fingers tangling in them as he falls back against the thin fabric. He barely has time to cry out before the curtain rungs snap with loud popping noises and the entire curtain comes down on his flailing frame.
A light switches on, the glow visible through the curtain, and a shadow looms over him. He gasps when strong hands wrap around his arms and attempt to pull him up.
"No!" he shouts, and the hands release him. He falls back with a thud, grunting as his head smacks hard against the floor. He struggles in the curtain, breathing hard as his fingernails slide uselessly along the smooth fabric. "Help! Someone help!"
"That's what I'm trying to do," the deep voice rumbles, and JD stops immediately, finally placing the familiar voice.
"Doctor Cox?"
Silence, then careful fingers navigating their way into the curtain cocoon before blessed fresh air and a worn, familiar face.
"What did you call me?" the red-haired man asks in a whisper, and JD blinks furiously against the light, holding a hand up to shield his eyes.
"D-Doctor Cox? What—"
The older man, suddenly, grabs his arm in a tight hold, and JD hisses in pain as he is forced around onto his stomach.
"Who are you?" the Irishman demands.
"What are you talking about?" JD barely gets the words out before his arm is jerked behind his back roughly. He gives a sharp cry.
"I'm going to ask you one more time, then I'm going to start breaking limbs," Doctor Cox threatens angrily. JD can't remember ever hearing the older man this upset.
"Perry?" someone asks from above them. JD can't move his head, but the older man looks up to find Carla and Turk standing over them, identical looks of concern and fear tainting their faces. "What's wrong?"
"Carla!" JD calls desperately, his free arm reaching toward the feet in his line of vision. Concern morphs into shock, and the couple starts forward, bent on saving their friend-in-need from his clearly deranged husband.
"Stop!" Perry holds up the hand that isn't currently holding down the intruder, halting the two in their tracks. "It isn't him! You have to trust me. This isn't JD!"
Before the young man can protest, several more lights come on, and more people come into view.
"Johnny?" Dan's incredulous tone echoes in the large expanse. "Coxie, what . . ."
JD takes Perry's moment of distraction to jerk away from the older man, rolling away and into another person—this one much smaller than the first. He grabs who he assumes is a child before they topple to the ground and sits up, said child in his lap.
The small crowd, which has grown in size as Jordan and more kids come out to find the source of the commotion, goes silent, seeming to hold their breath as one.
"Dad?" The small voice comes from the boy currently in JD's arms, and the young doctor starts, looking down into a pair of very familiar eyes.
"Who . . ." JD cannot wrap his head around this place. There are people that should know him that do but at the same time don't. And there are people—children—that he should apparently know
The boy's eyebrows furrow, and he starts to pull away from the man that is now most certainly a stranger. "Perry!" Sammy calls, and the man is kneeling beside him in an instant, grabbing hold of the boy and holding him close while stepping back toward the still-growing crowd.
Swallowing, JD finds the strength to stand on shaky legs. He is surrounded now, not just by people he knows and recognizes from the hospital but by complete strangers as well. Dozens of pairs of eyes glare at him accusingly, and as they watch him, he studies the people that are supposed to be his friends and family.
Turk and Carla look older, tired. Dan looks the most confused, the most scared. He is torn between wanting to hug the younger man and beating the shit out of him until he tells them where his real little brother is.
Jordan looks indifferent to either action, her only move to grasp the hands of the teenage boy and the young girl at her sides.
And last, but certainly not least, Doctor Cox, who is holding the boy to him like any father would do for his child. The older man looks pissed, and JD has a feeling that if the boy wasn't currently holding tight to his mentor's neck, he would be kicking the crap out of him right now.
The question was . . .
"What the fuck is going on?"
0 o 0 o 0
February 6th 2009
"Gandhi, why in the holy name of someone or other are you looking at me like that?" Doctor Cox has been up all night in the ICU attempting to keep a newly-wed couple—victims of a hit-and-run—from crashing. The wife made it—her husband lapsed into a coma and died in the night. Needless to say, the Irishman is not in the best of moods.
It is five in the morning. His shift is over. All he wants is to go home, collapse in his bed, and not think about his next shift at eleven that night. Yet here the bald surgeon is, standing in the way of his only exit. The older man is about to lose his sanity.
"I'm sorry, Doctor Cox," Turk says exhaustedly, looking every part of his apology and almost as tired as Doctor Cox feels.
"The wife not sleeping with you again?" the older man jokes half-heartedly. "I tell you, those couch cushions can be—"
"He insisted that we come to see you," Turk interrupts, stopping the man mid-rant.
Before he can inquire "Who?" however, someone steps in from outside.
"Perry," John says desperately, "we need to talk."
Doctor Cox stands motionless for a moment, the chaos of the night slowly seeping from his bones as he stares into the eyes of . . . someone not Newbie.
His gaze wanders over the younger man, briefly at first. He notices the other's height—not more or less than it ever has been, but somehow not the same. This man, this stranger, carries himself differently, with an air of confidence that the older doctor is not used to. At the same time, however, his stance is defensive, defiant, his feet steadily placed shoulder-width apart—much different from his normal, awkward shifting from one foot to the other.
Doctor Cox takes a closer look with his second glance. This JD is surprisingly fuller. Not fatter—no, if anything he's slimmer—but well-muscled. His biceps stretch the fabric of his shirt sleeves, the cotton clinging nicely to his defined torso and abdomen. The older man is hesitant to admit it, but he is mildly impressed.
JD's hair is longer—not exceedingly so, but enough to brush behind his ears—and less wild. Still as dark as it always has been but sporting a few premature gray strands. His skin is still an unhealthy paste color, but it is weathered, crinkled in the corners of his eyes and his lips. The young man's eyes are what captivate the Irishman most. What used to be a glistening, bright blue that emitted ponies and rainbows and countless amounts of girlish things is now a dull, haunted blue-gray circled by hollow, purple rings that speak of innumerable sleepless nights. Doctor Cox shudders to think of the things that these eyes have seen.
"What . . ." he starts, at a loss for words as he swallows the uncertainty at the back of his throat. "What is this? Some kind of joke?"
The stranger opens his mouth to speak, but Turk jumps in instead. "Doctor Cox, I think you should listen to what he has to say."
The red-haired man shakes his head incredulously. "You've got to be kidding me. This is crazy! What do you think you're doing, playing this stupid game? So you dressed the little girl up to look . . . to look like . . ." He's not exactly sure who he is supposed to be looking at, let alone what he should be thinking about this situation.
"Well, he's obviously not JD!" Turk says desperately, genuine fear crossing his features as he gestures toward the not JD. "You need to hear him out, 'cause he's got a lot of shit to say, and I can't be the only one dealing with this right now."
With a scowl and another once over of the young man, Doctor Cox crosses his arms. "You've got exactly two minutes to convince me why I should give up my precious beauty sleep for your sorry ass."
The stranger begins almost before the words have left the Irishman's mouth. "My name is John Dorian. I'm not . . . I'm not from here." The words are almost apologetic, and worry lines appear above the young man's brow—the first sign of concern that he has shown since showing up at the hospital. "I don't know what happened . . . I'm not supposed to be here."
"Obviously," Doctor Cox snorts, looking down at his sneakers to consider the other man's words. Absently, his gaze shifts to not JD's feet, and he notices with some curiosity that the young man is favoring his left foot more than his right. Yes, something is most definitely different about him. And it's going to take more than a conversation to find out what. With a resigned sigh and a vicious scrubbing of his face with his fingertips, he groans and spins on his heels. "Exam room three. Now."
0 o 0 o 0
"Shirt off," the older doctor commands, flipping through a chart and frowning as he realizes it will most likely be of no help. He tosses it aside and turns to face the young man, arms crossed and eyebrow raised in anticipation. Without hesitation, John roughly pulls his shirt over his head, letting it drop to the floor and staring at the other man defiantly.
Doctor Cox stands speechless, staring with a feeling of dread growing in the pit of his stomach. The bruises and scars that litter the younger man's torso are grotesque. "Jesus, kid," he whispers, shaking his head.
John smacks his hand down on the examination table in frustration, barely registering the sting that travels up his forearm and trembles in his elbow. "I'm not a fucking kid, Perry, I'm—" He stops himself, the word husband on the tip of his tongue. He has to be careful—the Doctor Cox and JD of this word may not be together yet . . . may not get together at all. "I need your help."
The older man frowns, gritting his teeth and swallowing hard. The kid can't be serious, can he? I mean . . . one look at him, and I can tell it's not the creampuff that hangs around me like a kicked puppy. But . . . Something's not right here.
"Sit," Doctor Cox demands absently. John complies almost immediately, taking a moment to give the older man a grateful look. Before sitting, he shucks his jeans, standing only in boxers. The denim feels strange against skin that is too familiar with the soft fabric of scrubs. It's part of his image in his other life—his real life. Who's truly going to follow a doctor that doesn't look the part?
Eyes skimming the other man's near-naked body, Doctor Cox finds the reason for this not JD's uncomfortable stance—the favoring of his left leg. The young man's right knee sports scars from where metal pins had once undoubtedly held his leg together.
The examination table is cold, but the young doctor finds it warmer than the ones his is used to. Everything is so bright, especially with the white surroundings. He doesn't remember this many lights from before. Doctor Cox notices his uncomfortable blinking and shuts off one set of lights, dimming the room.
"Thanks," John smiles sheepishly, and the older man is briefly reminded of his Newbie.
My Newbie? he thinks, disgust rising in his throat like bile. With a shake of his head, he swings his stethoscope off his neck and makes his way around the examination table, doing his best to keep his eyes off of the battered body. What he finds when he rounds the table, however, makes him grimace. Not that he hasn't seen scars before—war veterans come through here all the time, and hell if he doesn't have a few of his own. But this is JD . . . a JD. The young man shouldn't have these kinds of scars.
Doctor Cox tentatively places the chestpiece of the stethoscope against the other man's surprisingly cool skin, the circular disc covering a rather nasty, raised scar.
"Breathe in," he says, his voice quiet, softer than he means it to be. John complies with this order as well, drawing in a slow, ragged breath. The older man frowns at the sound he hears. "Breathe out." John's chest shudders as he does so, making the frown on the other man's face deepen. "There's fluid in your lungs."
"I know," John replies matter-of-factly, and Doctor Cox rips the ear buds from his ears.
"You know?" he asks, his arms crossing tightly and his teeth clenching as the young man cranes his neck to look at him.
"Yeah," John says with a flippant tone. "I do."
The Irishman growls, stomping his way around the table and glaring at the other. "Are you taking up a collection, or is there an actual reason why you have the beginning signs of pneumonia? 'Cause to be perfectly honest, Annabelle, this whole thing is just blowing my mind a little bit. Do people in your alternate universe walk around with infected lungs? Is that the new 'in thing'?"
John is quiet. A small smirk lifts one corner of his mouth, and it drives the older man insane. "Future," John says with a mildly amused voice, and Doctor Cox's eyebrows furrow. "I think I'm from an alternate universe future."
The other man deflates, rubbing a hand over his tired face.
"It's not common," the futuristic, alternate universe doctor explains calmly. "Pneumonia, I mean. We still have antibiotics—just . . . a limited supply."
"How limited?" The older man doesn't want to admit it, but he's truly curious about the world that this person comes from—after all, alternate universe or not, a war is on the way.
"We get supplies once a month," John says with a thoughtful shrug. "When things are quiet, we can ration them to last at least sixty days."
"And when things get loud?"
The young man goes quiet, his lips pursing and his eyes going blank as memories of crying people, sick people, dying people, flutter across his mind. He remembers those first long months when he and the medical staff were on their own. No supplies, no safe haven. Many of them spent that time in over-crowded quarantine camps, including John himself. When he was finally able to escape—when Perry and the others had banded together and come for the man that had spurred a country into action—he knew he couldn't be one of the followers. If he was going to save people and stand against those that opposed them, he was going to have to lead an army.
"Bad things," he whispers, running the horrific images from his thoughts. "Bad things happen." He blinks, clears his vision, to find Doctor Cox staring at him grimly, and he takes a steady breath. "Are you finished?"
The older man shakes his head, re-situating the stethoscope in his ears and placing the chestpiece on John's left pectoral. Ignoring the firm muscle there, he repeats the procedure, listening with disdain to the gurgling in the other man's lungs.
"Are you at least taking an antibiotic for this?" he asks, replacing the stethoscope around his neck.
John nods. "When I can, I do."
Doctor Cox grits his teeth and crosses his arms. "'Can' is not an option here, Betty. Either you are or you aren't. It's that simple."
"We don't have the supplies to waste that much antibiotics," John counters civilly, as if he has had this conversation before.
"How is using medication to get better 'wasting' it?"
"We might need it for someone else." The young man's voice is getting desperate. His tone clearly says "back off," but the older doctor will have none of it.
"I think you should stop worrying about who might get sick and start thinking about those who are." Doctor Cox's voice has amplified in volume, but to his disappointment, the other man barely bats an eye.
"I won't let our children die like that, Perry!" John growls so suddenly that the older doctor takes a step back.
"Children?" he asks quietly, swallowing hard after the word has left his lips.
John covers his face with his hands, leaning forward on the table and resting his elbows on his thighs. "You don't know what these places are like," he says, his voice fluttering but remaining somewhat steady. "It's dark all the time. We can't go outside, we can't be too loud. Fuck! We can't even let them run around. It's just too crowded and too hot during the day, then too cold at night." He sits up, staring at the older man with desperation, with pleading eyes. "I stay up half the night checking to make sure they're warm, and I lay awake the other half feeling guilty that I'm not checking on them. I can't . . . They need something better!"
The older man's eyes soften slightly, the way they always have when something serious surfaces in their sitcom of a life. "They're . . . sick?" he asks carefully.
John shakes his head and closes his eyes. "No. Not now." Sighing, he lets his muscles relax a little. The tension is still there, but only to a certain degree. "I remember when Jack got sick." He swallows hard, wincing at the memory. "We were so scared. Jordan—" he lets loose a short bark of laughter "—she couldn't stop pacing for the life of her. Thought she'd wear a trench into the floor." John smirks. "You said she'd be able to use it as a trough." His face sobers again. "I won't watch it happen again. Not to Sammy, not to Jack, not to any of them."
Doctor Cox stands for a moment in bewildered silence, breaking the quiet only when a single thought comes to mind.
"Who's Jack?"
AN: Let me know if any of this is sounding as well as I thought it did the first time around....Really, I'd like to know.
Later, gators! Catch you all on the flip side. :)