Chapter Text
Getting sent home from Afghanistan with a partially missing leg was, John decided, a frustration he would rather live without.
His new flat was small, though clean. His cane stood nearby, one of the most aggravating changes he was having to get used to. Harry had been by earlier, distraught enough to forego her usual drinking in favor of wailing and moaning over the sight of him. It was funny how that happened, sometimes. It was a habit of hers from when she was a kid – back then, it had been her being the one injured. Distracted from one obsession or another by pain or tears. She had once been dragged down a street by an improperly contained dog, but it had stopped her from arguing with him about something to do with school.
The details had slipped, over the years, but he remembered her clinging to him as he helped her back home. The argument had been forgotten, after that, and she hadn’t brought it back up again.
It was the same now.
Harry had met him at the airport, her face pulled tight. She had driven for once, sober enough to do so. Once she had mentioned she would be driving, John had demanded she not do so unless she was sober. He wasn’t going to risk lives just so his sister could put up a front of contrite and worry. Surprisingly, she had agreed to it.
Clara hadn’t come with her.
Harry had brought him to his new flat, arranged by someone else and paid in full for the first few months. She had chattered away at him for a handful of hours, her drinking forgone in favor of trying to awkwardly figure out where they stood these days. He hadn’t spoken to her much since he had gone off to get shot at.
The IED had been a surprise.
The soldier he had been tending to, actively pulling off the field, had survived just narrowly. John’s leg had shielded his face from the blast. He’d lost an arm, all the same, sent home in roughly the same shape as John had been.
So now he was here.
In his flat.
Alone.
At least he still had a good portion of his leg.
John stared at the apple on the table in front of him, sighing deeply as he closed his eyes. Shaking his head, he picked it up and set it back in the fridge. He had no appetite for the damn thing, he shouldn’t pretend to. John took a deep breath and stood up slowly.
He knew what was happening with his leg.
The shot to the shoulder had been bad enough. He’d been certain he’d almost finished out his military career with that one.
An infarction of the leg, however, was the thing that had halted him.
The IED had come not too long after the bullet, with no choice but to continue working to save a life while bleeding from the shoulder. The bullet had gone straight through, so he hadn’t been risking damage, but he had needed to keep going. There had been a life at stake, there had been risks he needed to take to ensure that others survived. He would never have been able to forgive himself if he hadn’t kept moving. The soldier had been in the military for a year, young and stupid about a number of things, but he had a fiancée at home. A daughter on the way, thanks to his last leave.
John had made certain he would make it back home to them.
Grabbing his cane, John moved towards the door, making sure he had his keys and his wallet before he left. Wouldn’t do to get locked out, after all.
There were deliveries arranged, groceries taken care of given his level of disability, but he wanted to get out of the flat before he lost his mind. A short walk would not hurt him. And, even if it did, John thought as he patted down his pockets, he had solutions for that. Pain management was something they had gone over with him before sending him home. He knew from experience that doctors made the most frustrating patients but he had never before appreciated being on the other side of the interaction. He’d known the instructions, known how to take care of things, what complications could arise, and what could potentially make things worse.
Shock and trauma made things worse, he knew that as well.
He hadn’t counted on how angry he would be about his injuries. How much he felt like he’d been held captive.
John settled into a slow enough pace to keep the pain from flaring up. They were still discussing amputation of the limb – physical therapy had proven that he could still walk on it but they were still discussing whether or not the nerve damage would be progressive. If his life would be made easier by the loss of the deadened leg.
Even he wasn’t sure.
The park was nice enough.
The sunlight was of the usual kind found in London – short-lived, softened by smog and the surrounding clouds. Nonetheless, it felt good. Nothing like the harsh brightness he had gotten used to in Afghanistan and maybe that was what he needed right now. There were few people in the park for the time of day. The usual types, of course, those on lunch from their jobs, those with nothing else to do. Like John, a few others who weren’t at work or were unemployed.
A man in a suit was walking down the path ahead of him and John frowned as he studied the man’s hair. Something about him was familiar, but he wasn’t in the mood to see someone who might know him. Who might be expecting him to be something resembling himself.
He didn’t call out.
His walk took him over an hour. Before, it would have taken him twenty minutes to cover the same ground. John closed the door to his flat behind himself, practically tossing his cane into the corner next to his bed as he sat down and covered his face. The length of the walk hadn’t been the thing to set him off – that honor was reserved for the fact that he’d needed to sit down for thirty minutes to regain enough strength and wind to keep going.
Flopping back, John pulled out his phone and scrolled through the news, trying to ignore the inscription on the back of the device even as the texture of it brushed his fingers. Clara was going to divorce Harry and that was just one more item on the list of things he felt like he would go mad if he thought too long about.
Serial suicides.
John frowned, tapping the headline and watching the short video of the detective on the case – one Detective G. Lestrade – before he read the accompanying article. There were mentions of traces of magic on some of the scenes, not enough to come to any conclusions about what may or may not be happening.
In the comments on the article, there were mentions of theories, people angry and scared the way people always were.
Shutting his phone screen off, John set it to the side of his head, sinking into the pillow and closing his eyes. Everything was too soft, too comfortable. The flat was colder than he remembered living being. His dreams didn’t help either, dragging him back to the battlefield and the scorching sun and the pain. The sound of the IED and the ringing of the shot that connected with his shoulder.
Groaning, John turned over and shoved his face into his pillow.