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nickelsandcoatsTitle: I’ll Give You Everything You Need (You’ve Given Me Everything I Want) 6/? || at Ao3
Author: Sarah/![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nickelsandcoats
Rating: PG13 for this part
Spoilers: Spoilers (eventually) for all of season 2!
Word Count: ~2,300 for this part
Pairings: Sherlock/John, eventual Mycroft/Lestrade
Warnings: AU.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: Mycroft's never given his feathers to anyone before, but one person wins him over without even trying.
Notes: Forflying_dreamz's prompt here at my shuffle meme post. She asked for #103, which was, for this part, "The Dream of a Normal Death" from the Doctor Who: Series Three soundtrack by Murray Gold.
This is a sequel to Here Is What My Heart Will Give You (and Here Are the Things I Will Give Up for You). You really should read that one first before you read this story or this story will not make any sense. One last note: this story is set pre-Here Is What My Heart Will Give You (and Here Are the Things I Will Give Up for You) and will eventually end up post-Reichenbach. Expect lots of angst.
part i || part ii || part iii || part iv || part v
Interlude--John
The day John was shot was an ordinary day. He woke, ate a tasteless breakfast, went to the med tents with Murray, gave out anti-fungal creams and paracetamol, ate lunch (marginally tasty), and then got the call.
“Sir?”
“Watson, you’re needed to accompany a convoy out to the local villages for a medical visit. They’re leaving in twenty. Take Murray with you.”
“Yes, sir.”
John relayed the message to Murray, who looked at him with worry. It was rare that surgeons were chosen to accompany convoys⎯they were too valuable. John himself had seen action in Belfast, in Serbia, and even here in Afghanistan, but that had been in the early days, before they had firmly established camps that were more than a few tents and no fences to keep the enemy out.
“Did they say why?” Murray asked as they threw together some travel packs⎯gauze, wraps, morphine, ligatures, water.
“Just a medical visit,” John said shortly, checking his gun and adding some extra clips to his belt. He checked Murray’s gun as well, handing it and some clips over with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “But they have their reasons.”
Murray swallowed and accepted the weapon. He was green⎯never seen combat, had only fired his weapon at the range. John clapped him on the shoulder as he picked up his pack. “It’ll be fine,” he said.
He lied.
Two hours into their ride out to the villages, they were ambushed. A rocket came out of nowhere in the hills and the truck in front of them exploded in a spectacular fireball.
“Shit!” Murray yelled as their truck screeched to a halt. Everyone bailed out, crouching behind the truck for protection.
“Stay put!” one of the soldiers yelled to John and Murray before diving around the truck’s rear bumper to add his bullets to the hail of them that were pinging against the armored vehicle. John pulled his gun and looked grimly at Murray, who pulled out his own, hand shaking slightly.
An agonised scream rang out, and John shouted, “Cover me!” at Murray before he darted out from behind the truck to the side of the man (why hadn’t he bothered to learn their names?) who had told them to stay put. He was bleeding badly⎯the leg of his trousers was red and sticky. John cut the fabric, peeling it aside to reveal a spurting wound. The bullet had nicked an artery⎯not good. John yanked out a ligature long enough to be used as a tourniquet and tied it around the man’s thigh, pulling hard and making the man grunt in pain.
John spared him a quick glance as he said, “You’ll be all right,” as he plunged a syringe of morphine into the man’s thigh (Thompson, his name is Thompson, John thought as he caught a glimpse of the name strip on his armour). Thompson’s breathing was ragged as he fought back a scream when John rolled him on his side to check for an exit wound. There wasn’t one. John blinked and let himself think for three seconds about what the next step should be⎯the bleeding was slowing thanks to the tourniquet, but the bullet needed to come out and they were still almost an hour from base.
Just as he was reaching for a bottle of antiseptic, John’s shoulder was on fire.
Shot.
He had been shot and he had to stop the bleeding, had to keep Thompson alive had to get Murray’s attention had to had to had to⎯
He slumped forward, fingers slipping in his blood as he clutched his shoulder. The bullet had slipped through the exposed part of his shoulder revealed by the shifting of his armour as he’d reached for his pack, and oh, God, the pain he couldn’t think couldn’t focus and if he didn’t Thompson would die he would die himself. He groaned and blinked hard, trying to force his arm to work as he reached for his pack.
Thompson’s eyes were wide and glassy with shock and blood loss and where was Murray? He needed to have him tell Harry tell her he was sorry and he loved her and to remember him and and and
Murray’s hand closed around his arm and was dragging him back behind the truck, snagging John’s pack with his other hand.
“Thompson⎯” John managed to gasp.
“He’s gone, John,” Murray said. He shoved John down in front of the tyre and peeled John’s armour’s tape open, plucking it from him like a snake shedding its skin. John reached feebly for his pack as he slid down the tyre to lie flat on the sand, fingers scrabbling at one of the outer pockets of his pack where his feather, the one he had kept with him all these years, rested. Murray, seeing that he would not be calmed until he had the pack close enough to reach, paused in his wrapping of John’s shoulder to push the pack closer. Just as John’s hand touched the pocket with his feather, he thought he saw something black out of the corner of his eye. Pocket and feather forgotten, he turned his head to see, but whatever he saw vanished the moment his eyes would have locked on it.
He slumped further into the sand and let the darkness pull him under.
John didn’t remember much of the next few days. He remembered Murray’s face hovering over him as they bounced along back to Kabul. He had vague memories of staring at the ceiling of the hospital where he had worked for the past months. He knew he had been loaded onto a plane; he heard the words “Medical discharge likely,” and then he knew no more until he woke for good, conscious and lucid, at Selly Oak, with a black feather tucked into the breast pocket of his hospital gown and a gnawing ache in his shoulder.
He pulled out the feather from his pocket and twirled it between his fingers, examining it from every angle. He frowned slightly. This wasn’t his feather⎯he’d spent hours inspecting his feather over the years, and he knew it intimately. This one was a stranger. John flung his legs over the edge of the bed, planted his feet on the floor, took a deep, fortifying breath, and stood, gripping the rail with his right hand. He allowed himself to shake for ten seconds before getting a hold over himself and shuffled the three steps to the chair, where his pack sat, still dusty. His left hand tried to reach out automatically, but he froze at the pain that ripped down from his shoulder. John hissed and switched hands, fumbling a bit with the zipper of the outside pocket. Once he got it open, he pulled out his feather, clutching it to him like a talisman. Oddly, he felt a bit of the ache in his shoulder ease once he had his feather in hand, but then he registered the shooting pain in his thigh. He rubbed at his leg carefully, prodding it for signs of injury, but there were no bandages. He scrunched the hem of the gown up a bit and looked for scars, but there were none of those, either. He frowned and tried to stand again, only for his leg to collapse out from underneath him, sending him to the floor with a sharp yelp of agony as he twisted his shoulder.
One of the nurses came running in, clucking at him, as she manhandled him gently and got him stood up, then half helped, half carried him back to the bed and got him resettled, pulling on the various lines and leads that John had miraculously managed not to pull out on his three step sojourn. “There we are, Doctor,” she said briskly as she checked his vitals, “I’ll get Doctor Rhines in here to see you now that you’re awake and all. Let’s not go on any more adventures just yet, hmm?”
She was gone before John had the chance to sputter out an apology or demand an explanation of why his leg hurt so badly when there appeared to be nothing physically wrong with it. He sat the feathers carefully on the little table next to his bed and tried to stay calm, but it wasn’t working.
Ten minutes later, John had worked up a good head of steam and was about ready to get up and demand some answers, dodgy leg and screaming shoulder be damned, when the doctor breezed in, John’s chart under his arm.
“Good to see you, Doctor Watson,” he said, giving John a firm, dry handshake. “How are you feeling?”
“Sore,” John said shortly.
A sympathetic wince. “I’m sure, what with the screws and plate in your shoulder. I’ll get some more pain meds ordered for you. In the meantime, let me increase your morphine drip a little.” He reached over and fiddled with the regulator, adjusting it slightly.
“Let me see my chart.”
“I’m not sure that’s⎯”
John held out his right hand, staring down the other doctor. Something in his expression must have been absolutely forbidding, because the other man paled slightly and surrendered the chart, talking as John flipped through it.
Five screws, one plate, shattered scapula, limited movement for six weeks, PT required. John paged through the surgeon’s notes and then Doctor Rhines’ notes for the three days he’d been here. Dangerously high fever, infection. Loss of range of motion unknown, tremor in left hand intermittent, enough to keep him from ever performing surgery again.
“I was surprised to hear you’d been up and about already,” the other man was saying.
John grunted in acknowledgment. Adrenaline does strange things to the body⎯once he’d realised the feather in his pocket wasn’t his, he’d panicked and needed to ensure his feather was still here and safe⎯it had been a compulsion that went bone-deep and forced him to act. He got to the end of the chart and started back at the beginning, looking for what was missing⎯a mention of a leg wound.
There was nothing wrong with his leg. That couldn’t be right.
“Doctor Watson?”
“Mmm.” He kept flipping pages, eyes scanning at a frantic pace.
“Doctor Watson!”
John’s eyes flew up to meet the doctor’s at the command in the other man’s voice.
“You need to read this, too,” he held out a thick sheaf of papers, stamped and signed and terribly official.
John’s heart sank down into his stomach, and he had to hold back the violent wave of nausea that threatened to overtake him as he took the papers with a hand that only slightly trembled.
He read through them slowly, forcing himself to take in every word. Medical discharge. Unable to complete duties as required by his position. Pension. Counseling. Fuck.
Fuck.
John pressed his lips together, biting his bottom lip to keep himself from screaming or crying or both. Doctor Rhines was looking at him warily, and then cleared his throat. “Right,” he said, nodding at the papers in John’s hand. “I’ll leave those here for you⎯we’re not going to discharge you from here for a few week; we need to make sure your fever and infection are gone, and we’ll get you started on your PT and counseling regime here before sending you off. You’ll need to sign them before you leave.”
He stood up, brushing his hands on his trousers.
“What about my leg?” John blurted out.
“What about it?”
“It gave out from under me when I tried to stand up, but there’s no indication of injury from my charts. It hurts, still, here,” he pointed to a spot on his thigh, “but there’s no apparent reason for it.”
“Hmmm.” Doctor Rhines lifted the sheet and the hem of the gown just high enough to inspect where John had pointed, and then lowered them again. “There’s no indication of injury, Doctor Watson. I’m sure it was just your muscles being weakened from being off them for a few days.” He flashed a reassuring smile at John and took his leave.
John waited until the door was closed before he let loose an anguished howl that he barely managed to muffle with his pillow. It went on and on as he cried and screamed with the unfairness of it all. This wasn’t supposed to happen to him. He was supposed to be a doctor in the RAMC forever (well, at least until he chose to retire) and operate and save lives and now he couldn’t anymore. He was useless, worthless, careerless.
He didn’t know what to do. Who he was. What and who he was supposed to be now.
Finally, the storm passed enough so that he could drop the sweat-, spit-, and tear-soaked pillow to his lap, where it disturbed something. He frowned and lifted the pillow once more. The feathers had somehow made it onto his lap, two black curls against his blanket. He picked them both up and felt the hitching in his chest ease a bit. On closer inspection, John could see that while they were not wholly identical, there were enough similarities to infer that they had come from the same bird. He slid down the bed to lie flat, pillow disregarded, and held the feathers to the light, thinking of the black something he had seen just before he passed out in the sand. A soft susurrus of wind, a blast of desert heat, the smell of sand, crept through his consciousness, dulling the pain in his shoulder and leg and lulling him to sleep.
When the nurse came in an hour later to change out the various bags John’s IVs were hooked into, John was fast asleep, whimpering, brow furrowed as a nightmare ripped through him. The feathers were just out of reach of his clutched fist, which was seeking them blindly. The nurse, sensing that those feathers meant something to her patient, pushed them carefully into John’s fist, which closed around them convulsively.
As she shut the door behind her, John’s breath evened out and his brow relaxed slightly as he brought the feathers in closer to his cheek.
part vii
Author: Sarah/
nickelsandcoatsRating: PG13 for this part
Spoilers: Spoilers (eventually) for all of season 2!
Word Count: ~2,300 for this part
Pairings: Sherlock/John, eventual Mycroft/Lestrade
Warnings: AU.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: Mycroft's never given his feathers to anyone before, but one person wins him over without even trying.
Notes: For
flying_dreamz's prompt here at my shuffle meme post. She asked for #103, which was, for this part, "The Dream of a Normal Death" from the Doctor Who: Series Three soundtrack by Murray Gold.This is a sequel to Here Is What My Heart Will Give You (and Here Are the Things I Will Give Up for You). You really should read that one first before you read this story or this story will not make any sense. One last note: this story is set pre-Here Is What My Heart Will Give You (and Here Are the Things I Will Give Up for You) and will eventually end up post-Reichenbach. Expect lots of angst.
part i || part ii || part iii || part iv || part v
Interlude--John
The day John was shot was an ordinary day. He woke, ate a tasteless breakfast, went to the med tents with Murray, gave out anti-fungal creams and paracetamol, ate lunch (marginally tasty), and then got the call.
“Sir?”
“Watson, you’re needed to accompany a convoy out to the local villages for a medical visit. They’re leaving in twenty. Take Murray with you.”
“Yes, sir.”
John relayed the message to Murray, who looked at him with worry. It was rare that surgeons were chosen to accompany convoys⎯they were too valuable. John himself had seen action in Belfast, in Serbia, and even here in Afghanistan, but that had been in the early days, before they had firmly established camps that were more than a few tents and no fences to keep the enemy out.
“Did they say why?” Murray asked as they threw together some travel packs⎯gauze, wraps, morphine, ligatures, water.
“Just a medical visit,” John said shortly, checking his gun and adding some extra clips to his belt. He checked Murray’s gun as well, handing it and some clips over with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “But they have their reasons.”
Murray swallowed and accepted the weapon. He was green⎯never seen combat, had only fired his weapon at the range. John clapped him on the shoulder as he picked up his pack. “It’ll be fine,” he said.
He lied.
Two hours into their ride out to the villages, they were ambushed. A rocket came out of nowhere in the hills and the truck in front of them exploded in a spectacular fireball.
“Shit!” Murray yelled as their truck screeched to a halt. Everyone bailed out, crouching behind the truck for protection.
“Stay put!” one of the soldiers yelled to John and Murray before diving around the truck’s rear bumper to add his bullets to the hail of them that were pinging against the armored vehicle. John pulled his gun and looked grimly at Murray, who pulled out his own, hand shaking slightly.
An agonised scream rang out, and John shouted, “Cover me!” at Murray before he darted out from behind the truck to the side of the man (why hadn’t he bothered to learn their names?) who had told them to stay put. He was bleeding badly⎯the leg of his trousers was red and sticky. John cut the fabric, peeling it aside to reveal a spurting wound. The bullet had nicked an artery⎯not good. John yanked out a ligature long enough to be used as a tourniquet and tied it around the man’s thigh, pulling hard and making the man grunt in pain.
John spared him a quick glance as he said, “You’ll be all right,” as he plunged a syringe of morphine into the man’s thigh (Thompson, his name is Thompson, John thought as he caught a glimpse of the name strip on his armour). Thompson’s breathing was ragged as he fought back a scream when John rolled him on his side to check for an exit wound. There wasn’t one. John blinked and let himself think for three seconds about what the next step should be⎯the bleeding was slowing thanks to the tourniquet, but the bullet needed to come out and they were still almost an hour from base.
Just as he was reaching for a bottle of antiseptic, John’s shoulder was on fire.
Shot.
He had been shot and he had to stop the bleeding, had to keep Thompson alive had to get Murray’s attention had to had to had to⎯
He slumped forward, fingers slipping in his blood as he clutched his shoulder. The bullet had slipped through the exposed part of his shoulder revealed by the shifting of his armour as he’d reached for his pack, and oh, God, the pain he couldn’t think couldn’t focus and if he didn’t Thompson would die he would die himself. He groaned and blinked hard, trying to force his arm to work as he reached for his pack.
Thompson’s eyes were wide and glassy with shock and blood loss and where was Murray? He needed to have him tell Harry tell her he was sorry and he loved her and to remember him and and and
Murray’s hand closed around his arm and was dragging him back behind the truck, snagging John’s pack with his other hand.
“Thompson⎯” John managed to gasp.
“He’s gone, John,” Murray said. He shoved John down in front of the tyre and peeled John’s armour’s tape open, plucking it from him like a snake shedding its skin. John reached feebly for his pack as he slid down the tyre to lie flat on the sand, fingers scrabbling at one of the outer pockets of his pack where his feather, the one he had kept with him all these years, rested. Murray, seeing that he would not be calmed until he had the pack close enough to reach, paused in his wrapping of John’s shoulder to push the pack closer. Just as John’s hand touched the pocket with his feather, he thought he saw something black out of the corner of his eye. Pocket and feather forgotten, he turned his head to see, but whatever he saw vanished the moment his eyes would have locked on it.
He slumped further into the sand and let the darkness pull him under.
John didn’t remember much of the next few days. He remembered Murray’s face hovering over him as they bounced along back to Kabul. He had vague memories of staring at the ceiling of the hospital where he had worked for the past months. He knew he had been loaded onto a plane; he heard the words “Medical discharge likely,” and then he knew no more until he woke for good, conscious and lucid, at Selly Oak, with a black feather tucked into the breast pocket of his hospital gown and a gnawing ache in his shoulder.
He pulled out the feather from his pocket and twirled it between his fingers, examining it from every angle. He frowned slightly. This wasn’t his feather⎯he’d spent hours inspecting his feather over the years, and he knew it intimately. This one was a stranger. John flung his legs over the edge of the bed, planted his feet on the floor, took a deep, fortifying breath, and stood, gripping the rail with his right hand. He allowed himself to shake for ten seconds before getting a hold over himself and shuffled the three steps to the chair, where his pack sat, still dusty. His left hand tried to reach out automatically, but he froze at the pain that ripped down from his shoulder. John hissed and switched hands, fumbling a bit with the zipper of the outside pocket. Once he got it open, he pulled out his feather, clutching it to him like a talisman. Oddly, he felt a bit of the ache in his shoulder ease once he had his feather in hand, but then he registered the shooting pain in his thigh. He rubbed at his leg carefully, prodding it for signs of injury, but there were no bandages. He scrunched the hem of the gown up a bit and looked for scars, but there were none of those, either. He frowned and tried to stand again, only for his leg to collapse out from underneath him, sending him to the floor with a sharp yelp of agony as he twisted his shoulder.
One of the nurses came running in, clucking at him, as she manhandled him gently and got him stood up, then half helped, half carried him back to the bed and got him resettled, pulling on the various lines and leads that John had miraculously managed not to pull out on his three step sojourn. “There we are, Doctor,” she said briskly as she checked his vitals, “I’ll get Doctor Rhines in here to see you now that you’re awake and all. Let’s not go on any more adventures just yet, hmm?”
She was gone before John had the chance to sputter out an apology or demand an explanation of why his leg hurt so badly when there appeared to be nothing physically wrong with it. He sat the feathers carefully on the little table next to his bed and tried to stay calm, but it wasn’t working.
Ten minutes later, John had worked up a good head of steam and was about ready to get up and demand some answers, dodgy leg and screaming shoulder be damned, when the doctor breezed in, John’s chart under his arm.
“Good to see you, Doctor Watson,” he said, giving John a firm, dry handshake. “How are you feeling?”
“Sore,” John said shortly.
A sympathetic wince. “I’m sure, what with the screws and plate in your shoulder. I’ll get some more pain meds ordered for you. In the meantime, let me increase your morphine drip a little.” He reached over and fiddled with the regulator, adjusting it slightly.
“Let me see my chart.”
“I’m not sure that’s⎯”
John held out his right hand, staring down the other doctor. Something in his expression must have been absolutely forbidding, because the other man paled slightly and surrendered the chart, talking as John flipped through it.
Five screws, one plate, shattered scapula, limited movement for six weeks, PT required. John paged through the surgeon’s notes and then Doctor Rhines’ notes for the three days he’d been here. Dangerously high fever, infection. Loss of range of motion unknown, tremor in left hand intermittent, enough to keep him from ever performing surgery again.
“I was surprised to hear you’d been up and about already,” the other man was saying.
John grunted in acknowledgment. Adrenaline does strange things to the body⎯once he’d realised the feather in his pocket wasn’t his, he’d panicked and needed to ensure his feather was still here and safe⎯it had been a compulsion that went bone-deep and forced him to act. He got to the end of the chart and started back at the beginning, looking for what was missing⎯a mention of a leg wound.
There was nothing wrong with his leg. That couldn’t be right.
“Doctor Watson?”
“Mmm.” He kept flipping pages, eyes scanning at a frantic pace.
“Doctor Watson!”
John’s eyes flew up to meet the doctor’s at the command in the other man’s voice.
“You need to read this, too,” he held out a thick sheaf of papers, stamped and signed and terribly official.
John’s heart sank down into his stomach, and he had to hold back the violent wave of nausea that threatened to overtake him as he took the papers with a hand that only slightly trembled.
He read through them slowly, forcing himself to take in every word. Medical discharge. Unable to complete duties as required by his position. Pension. Counseling. Fuck.
Fuck.
John pressed his lips together, biting his bottom lip to keep himself from screaming or crying or both. Doctor Rhines was looking at him warily, and then cleared his throat. “Right,” he said, nodding at the papers in John’s hand. “I’ll leave those here for you⎯we’re not going to discharge you from here for a few week; we need to make sure your fever and infection are gone, and we’ll get you started on your PT and counseling regime here before sending you off. You’ll need to sign them before you leave.”
He stood up, brushing his hands on his trousers.
“What about my leg?” John blurted out.
“What about it?”
“It gave out from under me when I tried to stand up, but there’s no indication of injury from my charts. It hurts, still, here,” he pointed to a spot on his thigh, “but there’s no apparent reason for it.”
“Hmmm.” Doctor Rhines lifted the sheet and the hem of the gown just high enough to inspect where John had pointed, and then lowered them again. “There’s no indication of injury, Doctor Watson. I’m sure it was just your muscles being weakened from being off them for a few days.” He flashed a reassuring smile at John and took his leave.
John waited until the door was closed before he let loose an anguished howl that he barely managed to muffle with his pillow. It went on and on as he cried and screamed with the unfairness of it all. This wasn’t supposed to happen to him. He was supposed to be a doctor in the RAMC forever (well, at least until he chose to retire) and operate and save lives and now he couldn’t anymore. He was useless, worthless, careerless.
He didn’t know what to do. Who he was. What and who he was supposed to be now.
Finally, the storm passed enough so that he could drop the sweat-, spit-, and tear-soaked pillow to his lap, where it disturbed something. He frowned and lifted the pillow once more. The feathers had somehow made it onto his lap, two black curls against his blanket. He picked them both up and felt the hitching in his chest ease a bit. On closer inspection, John could see that while they were not wholly identical, there were enough similarities to infer that they had come from the same bird. He slid down the bed to lie flat, pillow disregarded, and held the feathers to the light, thinking of the black something he had seen just before he passed out in the sand. A soft susurrus of wind, a blast of desert heat, the smell of sand, crept through his consciousness, dulling the pain in his shoulder and leg and lulling him to sleep.
When the nurse came in an hour later to change out the various bags John’s IVs were hooked into, John was fast asleep, whimpering, brow furrowed as a nightmare ripped through him. The feathers were just out of reach of his clutched fist, which was seeking them blindly. The nurse, sensing that those feathers meant something to her patient, pushed them carefully into John’s fist, which closed around them convulsively.
As she shut the door behind her, John’s breath evened out and his brow relaxed slightly as he brought the feathers in closer to his cheek.
part vii
