Title: I've Got Soul, But I'm Not A Soldier

Summary: He's been an imbed for six weeks now.

Rating: PG-13

Notes: Set sometime during Season 5/6

Disclaimer: All credit goes to Sorkin, Wells, & NBC/Warner Bros.

If they're anything, the back hills of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border are dusty, desolate, and more than hot enough to make Danny Concannon hate the combination of his coloring and privileged (read: air-conditioned) upbringing. He's been an imbed for six weeks now. Long enough to know that, technically, the title doesn't belong to him, seeing as he's attached to a Red Cross health-and-welfare type dispatch rather than a combat unit. Still, he wears the name along with the patchy helmet and vest he was given back on day one, whenever that actually was.

They're bringing medical supplies to a village that's –somewhere. He doesn't know where. Doesn't know how, moreover. Doesn't know how a place filled with people could exist inside of this vacuum of sand and hills and heat. But he keeps walking. Keeps his head down, cause right now isn't his time, isn't his job. Now's reserved for their fearless leader, who, at twenty-eight, looks too young to have been spit out of West Point, let alone the Army's medical school.

A flash and a sizzle flies past Danny's left shoulder. He feels –honest to anything feels –his pupils dilating and right then he knows. The flash, the sizzle; they didn't belong to the sun. And that's very, very bad.

"Get DOWN!"

He can't tell who's yelling, just that he and whoever it is are on the same page. Trouble is, the rest of him, the parts aside from his pupils, are out with a different idea. His legs are saying 'No, I can't do that right now' and his arms agree: 'There are more important things.'

So, when he runs out into the haze of not-sun-not-heat flares, he's all legs and arms and grabbing hands. Hands that, somehow, manage to latch on to the stunned colleague nobody else noticed flagging behind the perimeter of their little group. They fall into the ground, into the sand, with his torso curled around the other man's head, his heart pounding against both vest and helmet.

"Concannon! The hell !–what're you doing?"

It sounds like the company leader, first, only he knows it's not. The kid's too busy, wouldn't be yelling now. But then, who?

"Ever want to see her again? You know!"

Oh, right. It's his heart, screaming at him between gulps of dust and air, making itself heard over the muted sounds of whatever firefight is going on over his head.

"You know you can't be doing this. One second, one stupid slip is all there's gonna be before you're done. And on the other side of the world –I mean, think! What's that gonna do to her? Goddamn it!"

"I know, I know," he mumbles. And he does. Thing is, though, he doesn't mind being reminded. Cause every thought of her, every nag and every jab, is a reminder that he's still got a beating heart under the borrowed vest. And that, more than the vest, more than the helmet, and even more than the armed escort, is going to be what keeps him alive and, someday, gets him home.