Sherlock Dari drabble Ch 17: Military Cross
A/N: This is not based on anything that's already happened, merely what I've seen and heard about the conflict in Afghanistan.
In Chapter 17 we learn that John has been involved in acts of bravery in Kandahar, Kabul, Chaghcharan and Herat. He has three commendations for bravery aside from his medals, but it's the informal one that I won't be writing about, and it's the one that's supposed to have taken place in Herat. We've seen the first incident in Kandahar and Bill's rescue in Chaghcharan: this is set just outside Kabul.
The REMEs are the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Corps; the Cherry Berries are the Parachute Regiment; the Scablifters are the RAMC; and the Sheep Shaggers are the Black Watch (the long-running joke being that the only thing to do in Aberdeenshire, the regiment's home turf, is to do unmentionable things to the local wildlife).
Trigger warning: non-explicit battlefield violence, minor OC death.
John was basking in the sun on the roof when he heard it. Sherlock, who had all but barricaded himself in the flat when he saw the UV index for the day, was huffing, muttering under his breath about pompous fools and calling Mycroft, of all people. A curly head appeared next to him through the hatch as John took a long pull from a cold beer.
"What's got you so riled you're thinking of calling brother dearest?"
Looking nonplussed that John had heard him, Sherlock gathered his thoughts and thrust a letter in a thick ivory envelope under his nose. John flicked his sunglasses up on top of his head, peering at the offending package. He froze, recognising the RAMC crest. Oh God, they'd better not be hauling me back. I've only just gotten settled again...
Opening it gingerly, as if it might contain an unpleasant substance, John pulled open the letter, preparing to read it before noticing a dark shadow looming across it.
"Sherlock! I can't read with you peering over my shoulder like that! Sod off, you nosy bugger.", he said firmly.
Sherlock sat on the side of the hatch, long legs dangling down onto the ladder.
Once he'd finished reading it, he looked at his flatmate, fidgeting fit to burst.
"It's okay. They're not sending me back-"( Sherlock breathed an audible sigh of relief) "-but they want me to testify at an upcoming inquest for someone that died when we served together."
"Isn't it a bit, well, slow? You left in 2010, and it's 2011 now..."
"Some of these things take years to put together because there's so much evidence."
"John..."
"You want to know what happened, don't you Sherlock? You and your bloody insatiable curiosity!"
John sighed, a note of long-suffering resignation creeping into his voice.
"His name was Carl Everett, but everybody called him Beetle."
"Everybody liked Beetle. You couldn't not love him; he had a wicked sense of humour, and he was really good at his job. He was the mechanic for our battalion; dealt with our jeeps, our Warriors, things like that."
They had been giving tetanus vaccinations at a school just outside Kabul, to girls and boys. As John, Macaulay, Aonghas Macalister (a Sheep Shagger on training as a field medic) and Carl Everett, a young Sapper seconded from the REMEs, made their way out to the Jeep, they noticed a flat tire on the driver's side. As Beetle jacked the car to change it, a crack of gunfire whistled over their heads, leaving them scrambling for cover. John looked to his left, seeing Brewer crouching and setting up radio contact with base, then looked to his right, finding Macaulay. Macalister was nowhere to be found. Poking his head up over the wrecked door of the Jeep in between bursts of gunfire, John spotted Aonghas, sprawled across the sand and bleeding freely from a wound to his abdomen as the children huddled in the far corner of the classroom, away from the Taliban ambush.
Looking once at the Captain to confirm, John fixed his sidearm and belly-crawled around the battered machine, rolling to the side as a bullet screeched dangerously close to his head. Whipping round to shoot at the insurgent taking potshots from the far corner of the building, John's aim was, as usual, bang on target. Yanking Macalister onto his back by the straps of his pack, John dragged him back behind their makeshift barricade, pressing down hard on the wound with both hands as his charge writhed underneath him. John was focused on Macalister's pallid face, packing the wound and administering morphine, when a hoarse yell from Macaulay made him turn.
Carl was spread-eagled in the dust, eyes vacant. A single, neat bullet hole was visible in the slightly weaker banding of the helmet just above his neckline. Leaving his superior to keep pressure on the wound, and knowing that backup was coming, John took his rage and focused on the sniper on the roof of the school. Standing up and taking aim, he fired, quickly ducking as the man's friends began another volley of shots. He smiled grimly as he fell from the roof into the playground with a bitten-off scream. Got the bastard. The chug-chug-chug of an Apache and the dull whirr of Warrior tracks along the dirt track reached his ears, and he forced himself to focus on his patient as the Cherrie Berries began evacuating the school from the back and sending out waves of fire and RPGs. Somebody somewhere yelled "Grenade!", and John was dimly aware of throwing himself in the way to shield the young Scot from the oncoming blast before the world exploded into tiny shards.
"I woke up at Bastion, just as they were hauling me off the Medivac. I got thrown against the side of the Jeep and ended up with three broken and two bruised ribs, a concussion and a ruptured kidney. They managed to put me back together again, and I spent a few weeks recuperating at the Queen Liz before I managed to convince them to redeploy me; Macaulay wasn't best chuffed. He yelled at me when I arrived, wondered if I'd learned anything since my cadetship...Made bloody sure I got a citation for it, which turned into a Military Cross." John chuckled at this, but his eyes were shining and sad. As he shivered in the cooling air, Sherlock draped the heavy wool blanket from the back of the sofa over his shoulders. His mind was assaulted by horrible images of John, tossed through the air and hurled against the unyielding metal like a matchstick in a hurricane. His skin crawled and a Something in the pit of his belly squirmed, and it was only assuaged by John's hand set squarely on his shoulder as he hauled himself up into a standing position.
"Let's go inside. It's bloody freezing up here now the sun's gone in."
"Crap telly and a Chinese?"
John looked up at his friend-and smiled.
A/N II: I had intended to write and post all the medal chapters in one go, but a) my muse for the army chapters has deserted me-this chapter being a concerted effort-and b) I think the last part (which will be two chapters, I think) will be more effective if it comes when you don't expect it...I am awful, I know.