Disclaimer: I don't own, obviously. A. N. I know, normal people go for fluffy things in December. This could very well turn out to be the absolute angstiest chapter in the whole fic. Consider yourself warned.
Sherlock set the table, for want of anything else to do except for grilling his alpha too soon. He'd learned long ago that John's stubborn streak more than matched his own: if he said he'd tell all at dinner, he wouldn't start until then. This way, at least, Sherlock could shave a handful of minutes from his wait.
Finally, their dishes were full of delicious lamb (especially to the wolf) and assorted vegetables (the detective was very partial to the peas), and at Sherlock's expectant look, John sighed.
"Yes, yes, I'll tell you all. I promised, didn't I?"
The sleuth didn't reply. There was no need to emphasise the point.
"The whole mess started - well, for me at least, but you're not here for an historical lecture on the origins of lycanthropy - in Afghanistan, as I'm sure you'd already deduced. We'd been asked for help by some locals, and we thought that earning some good will would be useful, but it was a trap. They changed and attacked us before we even reached the village - trying to deflect suspicion, maybe so they could pull it off again. Wild animals wandering through the mountains, if we didn't know how to handle that, our bad. Never mind that none of the bullets we had would have worked."
Sherlock hadn't meant to growl, but he did. If he'd been there, he would have seen through the deceit. Obviously not figured out what exactly the bastards were planning, but that something was afoot. But he'd never be there, because as fascinating as he found soldiers, he didn't do well with senseless discipline.
"The other men with me were killed. I'm sure they thought they'd killed me too - one of them had torn into my thigh, and undoubtedly expected me to bleed out. If I hadn't been a doctor, I would have, by the time the help we'd called for arrived. But I could handle things just long enough...I did expect to be laid up for a good while. Possibly sent back. But I was turned, instead, and our healing factor kicked in. I'm not sure if I was more shocked, being right as rain the following day, or the help who did arrive, and had seen the carnage I was almost part of."
"How did you explain it at the time?" Sherlock asked. If he was tearing into the lamb more energetically than usual, well, there was no one for him to punish for the carnage at hand, and he really needed to rip something apart, if not someone.
"I couldn't explain it, at the time, Not to myself, and much less to others. I was declared one lucky sonofabitch, which - in retrospect - wasn't wrong." John huffed a laugh, and Sherlock couldn't help himself. He joined in.
"A couple nights later, I discovered exactly how right that was. The full moon arrived. I was very confused waking up to - well, you know. Different senses, different everything. I slipped out of the tent in search of food, and that didn't go so well. I got out of camp with no more than a couple of grazes - I had at least the sense not to try to stop and explain - and a wild rabbit was a very welcome late supper."
"Wow, your first shift went worse than mine." If he'd been so confused, he didn't want to imagine how John would have felt.
"You could say that," John admitted. "Then again, I didn't have time to question reality. There's not much to wonder about when you slink back in and find out you're the talk of the whole camp. And I'd always liked a dash of horror, so a few things started to make sense. Even if, clearly, the ones who changed me weren't bound by moonlight or phase. So I had some good ideas in my grasp to roll with. Dealing with whatever happened, no matter what, was pretty much the point of my job, so I gave myself only a few breaths to panic, before starting to plan around it. I'd have a much harder time adjusting if I was a strictly non-fiction kind of guy."
"Yeah, sure. Lack of enough horror B-movies is what made me need an alpha's guidance," Sherlock snorted.
"You had that option. If the only weres you knew wanted to rip your throat open, you'd have found a way to adapt too, I'm sure, even without knowing at least the basics." John said it so matter of factly, like it was the day's shopping list.
"But you mentioned a pack!"
"Yeah, well. That came later. " John sighed deeply. "At first, I was alone. Luckily, I didn't need as much sleep as I used to, so I didn't fall asleep at work after wandering as a wolf at night. Actually, you could call it patrolling. When I shifted, might as well make sure that the bastards who did this to me weren't anywhere close."
"And you figured out how to shift at will to keep that up once the full moon was gone." Sherlock didn't ask it, he said it. Of course his alpha's protective instincts wouldn't let him rest.
"Yeah, well, it helped that when I was attacked it wasn't full moon yet. On the cusp, yes, full no. So I knew it was possible, and I wasn't about to let those fuckers have the tactical advantage."
The sleuth nodded along. Of course.
"A few days later, what had to happen happened. In fact, if it hadn't, I'd be seriously concerned about my brothers in arms. I got caught. Again. All that sneaking around was a nice game, but this was an army camp. If people...or things... keep sneaking in and out, there's a problem."
"In fact, the sentinel noticed me shifting back to human. Campbell knew what he'd seen, and there was no way around it but to admit the truth to him. I'd honestly thought the weirdness of the discovery would seal his mouth, but frankly, I should have known better. The news spread, and I had a choice. I could deny it all, say he must have dreamt it, or come clean. I took my chances with the truth. It might have helped that we didn't have silver bullets or blades. If they reacted badly, they could send me away, but not kill me on the spot. And after all, I knew those men."
Frankly, Sherlock wasn't sure he would be able to do the same in his shoes - or close enough. If John had been a mere human, discovered him, and told Lestrade, he'd rather take the blame for drugging him that let the people in his life know exactly how he'd been changed.
"Once I did show off, to persuade them it wasn't an especially silly attempt at a prank, they did, indeed, protest loudly. That I was hogging the superpowers. Bloody rude of me, apparently. I tried to explain that I was still figuring things out, and it seemed unwise to offer a treatment when I didn't know the full side effects. They didn't mind. Johnson pointed out that any treatment needs to have an experimental phase anyway, and a sample size of one wasn't exactly significant. "
Sherlock sighed. "I'm very aware of that, but I kind of assumed that you'd object if I tried to conduct my own experiments - the ones I volunteered you for, at least - on a larger scale."
"And you're right on the money on that one, mister."John sighed "Back to Afghanistan, I didn't have a good objection to Johnson either. In the end, I promised to share with anybody who asked. I didn't expect the whole unit to take the offer. "
"How could you not? It was the most logical choice."
"Logical? This coming from the person who's been arguing with his wolf almost nonstop?"
"Yeah, well, I'm not at war."
John's lip curled up in amusement. "Your brother would disagree."
"It is admittedly a rare event, but Mycroft is capable of being an idiot like anyone else. And I really hate to quote you at you, but why would your unit let the enemy have such a vast tactical advantage?"
"Logical," John echoed. "Two days later, the change was complete, and I had a whole pack to look after and teach, while figuring things out myself."
"I'm sure they appreciated it, John." They'd be crazy not to, after all.
"Oh, I know they did. It didn't take us long to start gaining a reputation for recklessness - and luck. The mad dogs, they called us, but why should we stay cautious after our...improvement? The other side would have needed to get close enough to sniff us out to notice the difference. There were plenty of other smells to cover it - if you find going out overwhelming, try having explosives everywhere. And of course, if they did get a whiff of anything lupine, they'd have to realise it wasn't their own side's scent mixed up in it. So the enemy didn't have any reason to shoot at us with silver."
"But you did," Sherlock said.
"Yep, but not much silver in the first place. And we still found enough bodies to be sure not everyone in the other camp was a were. So we kept our usual bullets... enemy weres would be dealt with up close and personal, if we came across them." John smiled his murderous smile, and Sherlock barely contained a shiver.
"We were happy; strong; focused," John continued, "we thought we'd win the war all by ourselves. Or close enough, at least. And then, of course, what we thought couldn't happen happened. Our recklessness came back to bite us. We thought we had nothing to fear - were healing factor, you know. Even if we were shot, we'd shrug it off quickly. Well, rifles aren't the only option...At least I should have expected it, if no-one else did. All this had started with an ambush. I knew the enemy was wily. One day, they taunted us - we weren't going to stand for it. We rushed in to attack. Well, we could shrug off a bullet or two, sure. But an entire minefield? That's a whole nother story."
"Oh, John." Sherlock's wolf was wailing. The words felt inadequate, but what else could he say?
"I'm a bloody doctor. I was supposed to help. But honestly? I didn't know where to start. We didn't even look human anymore, and I don't mean that we'd all shifted. It was the goriest puzzle you could imagine. Everyone was in pieces, and depending on what they'd hit, I couldn't even count on the body parts closest to them to be theirs in the first place."
Sherlock didn't need to have concluded his training to know what he was smelling, overwhelming all the spices and the smell of home: grief, undiluted.
"I'm sorry, John, but nobody could blame you. Especially because of something you've failed to mention."
"If I didn't say it, how would you know?" Sharp and annoyed, but the detective would take that over the old, deeply rooted grief which he'd unearthed, like a stupid dog digging up a dead body. He couldn't leave it alone, could he?
"Because it's obvious. What about your pieces, John?"
"I'm less easy to rile up than most,"he replied, and Sherlock barely held in a snort. Sure. He could attest to that. "...So I was in the rear," his alpha continued. "It's not that I didn't get hurt. My arm was almost ripped off, plus some shrapnel in my side and stomach. Even with our healing, it took long enough to heal that they decided to discharge me. Actually, I wonder if they had smelled us, after all, and added just a bit of silver dust or something. The wound got infected, which had never happened before. Then again, no damage had been that extensive before. Still, if I could have ..."
"You were going into shock. Wolf or not, there's no doubt. I know, and I'm not the doctor. No matter their superpowers, nobody could have been effective,"
"Well, I don't know that. Maybe Superman..."
"Do tell." He didn't even know how, but he seemed to have sent John on a weird tangent. He'd take stupid trivia he'd delete tonight over John dwelling on his heartbreak any day.
