From the Front Line

by one_wind

Summary:

"Smoke is everywhere."

One of Afghanistan's Moments makes it to the public eye via photograph, and John briefly becomes the face of the war.

Notes:

This fic has been translated into Chinese by the lovely earlydate.  You can read it in Chinese here, where there's also a charming fanart (This may require you to register on the Chinese website.)

Smoke is everywhere.

The world is grey and beige as it drifts throughout the scene, coloring distant buildings hazy until they look like ghosts, half imagined in a feverish nightmare. It obscures some of the men, but that only highlights others as they emerge from it like they were crossing over into the land of the living.

It might have been less disquieting if it weren’t for the bodies that punctuate the picture. Some are alive, hesitating to raise their helmets amid the rain of fire and lead. Others are dead, crumpled against the dirt road in the limp way that no viewer would mistake. But some are simply between, nameless shapes and bodies that are filling the amorphous maybe; maybe they will make it, maybe they will survive, maybe they will return home to kiss their wives and children and mothers and siblings, to hang up their uniforms, to coach softball teams, to build treehouses, to live. Maybe they will bleed out in the dust a thousand miles from home surrounded by strangers.

The maybes hurt the most.

Except in the midst of the maybes and the for nows and the nevers, there’s a man. His uniform is caked in the same grime as the others, his build unremarkable, his RAMC nametag unreadable. But the look in his eyes is a spark, and it burns through the celluloid like it was tissue. He struggles under the weight of another soldier, a boy whom he’s thrown over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

The boy is unconscious, and his legs hanging over the surgeon’s shoulders end shortly, gruesomely, just above the knees. They are nothing more than mangled stubs, bloody and black, torn fabric indistinguishable from mutilated flesh. The surgeon’s uniform is painted red, slowly dripping down to his waist, but his hands are sure where they grasp the boy and hold on with white knuckles. His gaze doesn’t meet the camera, but is fixed on a point above it and to the side, staring off into the distance at an unseen goal. His jaw is set, firm and resolute, and he stands tall, the only figure daring to stand in the field of fire. The threat of bullets, of shrapnel, of injury, of death. His charge needs him.

 

The first inkling John had that something was amiss was when Mrs. Hudson stopped to hug him spontaneously after dropping off tea and breakfast in the morning. He had only stumbled out of bed twenty minutes ago, horrifically late, after an all-nighter with Sherlock. But despite the fact that he was still in his pajamas, barefoot, on the kitchen floor, she’d taken one look at him and gathered him into her arms with a noise rather like the one his mother used to make when he’d done something to protect Harry.

“Ah – good morning?” he’d managed after a moment, hesitantly patting her back.

“Oh, John!” she said, squeezing him tighter before releasing him and pushing him back to arm’s length to take a good look at him. She smiled sadly, tutted her tongue, and then pushed him forcefully towards the tea service. “Now, you go ahead and eat up, don’t let it get cold.”

He blinked at the service. She frequently made them tea, and occasionally could be bothered to get them biscuits or scones, but this was something else entirely. There was tea, orange juice, and a little miniature jug of milk. Wide plates of scrambled eggs, rashers, and toast steamed beside napkins wrapped around silverware. Small bowls of grapefruit halves had been squeezed in somehow, and there were even little dishes of marmalade and jam.

“Mrs. Hudson, thank you, but you didn’t have to go to all the trouble –“

“Nonsense! I may not be your housekeeper, but I can still keep an eye on you boys.” She seemed like she was about to say something else, but then she just patted his shoulder and tottered downstairs again, leaving John to wonder if one of his relatives had died without telling him. But he really only had Harry left, and unless she dropped out of her AA program, she wasn’t about to be kicking the bucket anytime soon. Eventually, he set one of the plates on the coffee table, as Sherlock had fallen asleep on the couch, and settled down in the kitchen to eat.

After a few minutes, Sherlock woke up, sniffing and wrinkling his nose. With a bit of prodding, John managed to get him to eat about half of his plate before he abandoned it to the forces of Darwin and stomped off to take a shower. Rolling his eyes, John cleaned up afterwards and made sure all the dishes made it into the dishwasher. At least the dishwasher had stayed relatively clean after the horse epoxy incident two months ago.

He might have gone to the clinic to take a few shifts, but he’d thought last night’s case would take longer, and he’d preemptively called out of work for the next two days. So, resigning himself to a pleasant afternoon in the flat, he changed, shaved, and settled into his chair. He happily pulled out an abused and earmarked novel and began to read, but only made it fourteen pages in before his mobile phone rang.

Now what? It was usually Sherlock texting him for something from the other end of the flat, but he could still hear the water running upstairs, and he didn’t think Sherlock had lost quite enough sanity to go texting while in standing water. Fishing it out of his jacket pocket, he frowned at the number and clicked accept.

“Greg?”

“Morning, John. Hope I didn’t wake you; I know Sherlock probably didn’t let you get any sleep until round about when he called me last night.”

“No, no, you didn’t wake me, I was just reading. What seems to be the problem? I can go get Sherlock, if you’d like.”

“I wasn’t calling for Sherlock.”

John leaned his head back in the chair. That was a new one. Occasionally he and Lestrade rang each other to arrange a pub night with some of the others from the police station, but that was usually on weekend nights, not weekday mornings. They didn’t really just call to chat. “Ookay. Is everything alright?”

“Everything’s fine. I just…” there was a crackle on the other end that was probably a sigh. “I just wanted to thank you.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry?”

“Yeah.”

“No, I mean, thank me for what?”

There was a pause from Lestrade. Evidently he had expected John to know what this was about. Which was all well and good, except John hadn’t the faintest clue. “For… you know. Afghanistan. Your service.”

Silence reigned again, longer, as John processed that.

“You… called me up at eleven in the morning on a Tuesday to thank me for serving in Afghanistan.”

Lestrade drew in a breath. “Yyyyeah, that’s about it in a nutshell.”

“Ah…” John found himself rubbing his eyebrows with the thumb and index finger of his left hand. “Right. Well. You’re welcome?”

“Righto.” The awkwardness of the conversation was not lost on the detective, if the tone of his voice was anything to go by. Still, it seemed that he felt better having said it. “I’ll let you get back to your book. Have a good day, John.”

“You too, Greg,” John said, then clicked the phone off, staring at its screen in confusion. What exactly had just happened?

Frowning lightly, he set aside his mobile and went back into the kitchen to wipe down the service so he could return it to Mrs. Hudson. Tucked beneath the plates, though, was a folded up copy of the daily news. He tugged it out; Sherlock would want to read it, of course. And by that he meant that Sherlock would want him to read it and pick out the interesting bits for him.

He gave it a flick to open it up, then glanced over the front page,only to stop dead.

That was him.

When did they take that?

For that matter, why were they putting it on the front page?

With a dawning sense of worry, he sunk into the seat at the kitchen table to read over the article. It was a bland sort of article, something about the number of forces present in Afghanistan, the quality of equipment, and the ever-rising casualty counts. The photograph was clearly the real focus, as it took up the majority of the page above the centerfold. The caption noted that the RAMC officer was as of yet unidentified. Wryly, John couldn’t help but think that it wouldn’t stay that way for long. His face was all over London. Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson had already recognized it, and they wouldn’t be the last.

Above his head, the pipes squeaked as the water was turned off. A few thumps, and Sherlock came slouching downstairs dripping, a towel tied lackadaisically around his waist. He glanced around the room, then – with his usual hawk-like focus – zeroed in on John’s expression.

“Something’s happened.”

Practically before John saw him move, Sherlock was standing behind him, peering over his shoulder. He was dripping onto his shirt, and John could smell the fresh shampoo in his hair.

It normally only took an instant for Sherlock to skim articles and come up with a pithy response about the wit, or lack thereof, of the writers responsible. In this case, however, he stood quietly for a worryingly long moment before straightening up.

“We’ll be inundated with press.” He cast a glare at John as if this were his personal mission, as if he’d wanted Baker Street to be hunted down by reporters.

“Don’t look at me, it’s not as if I asked for this!”

Sherlock’s mouth thinned, but even he couldn’t find a logical response that would squarely place the blame on John; it was quite impressive, considering how good Sherlock was at being able to blame anyone for anything. Finally, he turned on one heel and trod wetly out of the living room.

John sighed. “Right, fine. Spectacular.”

He cast a long glance to the front page, then to Sherlock’s door, which was already swinging shut. Clambering to his feet, he headed back to the kitchen to heat up a new kettle for tea. Tea was the solution to everything, after all. But when he opened the door and sniffed the milk jug, he couldn’t help but cringe.

“I’m going out for milk, Sherlock! Text me if you need anything!”

There was no answer, of course, but that wasn’t unusual. John shrugged on his jacket and headed out.

An hour and a half later, he slammed the door of the flat shut.

Muttering under his breath, he climbed the stairs, plastic Tesco bags in hand, and shoved them into the fridge. The fridge door got equal abuse as the front door, and it creaked unhappily in response.

Sherlock eyed him from the couch, where he lay with his fingers steepled in front of his chin.

“Oh, don’t you look at me like that!” John snapped.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, you were looking at me like that, and now you’re doing that eyebrow thing, so don’t, I’ve had it.”

“I see,” Sherlock said noncommittally.

“No, you don’t,” John said heatedly. “I’ve had people accosting me all day! It should’ve taken fifteen minutes to go ‘round and get milk, and how long have I been gone? An hour and a half! Everyone feels the need to pull me aside and thank me, and while that is a lovely thought and I really appreciate the gratitude and all, I didn’t do anything! That’s one shot of me, but it could have been anyone! There are thousands of doctors and thousands of soldiers and I happen to be the one that gets shot!”

“You’re uncomfortable because you don’t think they should be paying attention to you?”

“I’m uncomfortable because it wasn’t anything special! I was doing the same thing I did every day, the same thing everyone else did. I did my job.”

Sherlock watched him a moment, dark eyes unreadable, then finally said, “It’s my understanding that your attitude that it was only your job is only compounding their affection for you.”

“Well, it shouldn’t!”

“Heroes don’t exist, John,” Sherlock said, closing his eyes. But after a moment, he relented, flicking them open to cast his gaze back to John. “But,” he said with a hesitation, “if they did, you would be one of them.”

And for once, John had nothing to say.