przed

A Remembrance Day Pros story for the

discoveredinalj Discovered in Remembrance challenge.

Title: Mud and Remembrance
Author: P.R. Zed
Slash or Gen: Yes
Notes: Thanks to

ancastar for a blazingly fast beta. My prompt was the poem Mud, by Richard Church.

After it all went pear-shaped, all I could do was lie on the ground, and try not to die.

Hard work, not dying. Especially when the only thing keeping you out of the opposition's line of fire was a rotten old log. Especially when you could taste mud and smell mud and you were certain you were going to drown in the foul stuff.

As much as bullets or grenades, mud was the enemy of soldiers. I'd known that for a long time, for as long as I could remember. Forever.

Since I could walk, and my mum would dump me at the McIntyre's next door while she worked a night shift, or went out to the pub with her girlfriends, or stepped out with one of the men who'd appeared in a steady stream after Da strode out the door one day and never came back. Old Mr. McIntyre had told me stories of the Great War, the one that was supposed to end all wars. Stories of sitting with the rest of his platoon in trenches filled with water and rats and mud, wondering where they were and what they were fighting for and when the bloody officers would send them over the top. Stories of being too close when a shell exploded in the field, of being showered in a geyser of mud and shrapnel and blood. Stories of seeing a good mate shot down in a field, seeing him drown in a ditch of filthy water and not being able to help.

"Don't, Frank," Mrs. McIntyre had always said. "Don't tell him those stories. They'll give the boy nightmares." But they hadn't. Except for the mud, I'd thought it all sounded like a grand adventure. And I'd always came back for more. When I'd finally left Liverpool, Frank McIntyre had been the only one I said goodbye to.

There was a crack and a whine and a bullet smacked into the ground far too close to my head. I flinched, and wished I hadn't, the movement causing searing agony in my side where the first bullet had struck. I clenched my teeth against the pain and
tried to think of other things, of better times, but I couldn't. I could only think of battles and pain and more mud.

The first battle I'd ever been in, there'd been mud. No rain in that bloody country for nearly a year, and then it had rained for a week before our attack on the rebel stronghold. Not a pleasant English rain, either. The sky had chucked it down for days. The fields we'd fought in that day were churned into knee-deep muck. As we'd waded through the stuff, I'd seen more than one man shot down beside me. That day, I'd remembered Frank McIntyre and the friends he'd lost in France, and I'd wondered who would remember me if I died in that African mud.

"Bodie!"

No need to wonder who'd remember me now.

Doyle was off to my left, deeper in the woods. He had better cover over there, the lucky bastard. "You all right?" Doyle's voice was calm, but I could hear the fire beneath it.

"Yeah," I said, or tried to. The single syllable came out a mere croak I wasn't even sure Doyle heard.

"You stay put, mate."

I nearly laughed at that. As if I could do anything else. The second bullet had hit my thigh. Not a dangerous wound, not yet--it had hit muscle, not bone, not a major artery--but it was bleeding like a bastard and it hurt like a bastard when I so much as shifted.

But it was all right, because Doyle was here. Doyle would save me, if he could. And if he couldn't, Doyle would remember me. I was more sure of that than I was the world was round. I smiled in spite of the pain, in spite of the mud, in spite of the thought of death waiting for me in these woods, with a skeletal leer and a too-sharp scythe.

Too much death. I'd seen far too much death over the years. Africa, Lebanon, Ireland. Men, women, and, once or twice, in places I'd rather forget and never could, children. I'd come to England hoping to leave death behind, but it had followed me to this green and pleasant land. Villains, grasses, civilians, CI5 agents, I'd seen death take them all. Even Doyle, for a long minute. But Doyle hadn't surrendered. He'd fought death and Mayli's bullet, fought his way back onto the squad. I forced myself to take one breath, then another, and reckoned I could fight at least as hard as my scrawny git of a partner.

A volley of bullets cut through the snarl of my thoughts, tearing into the log that was my only protection. "Hurry, Ray," I whispered to myself, not sure how much longer the dozy bastards we were up against would continue to miss their target. Then there was rustling and murmuring in the woods, and then the sound of gunfire and shouting and screaming erupted around me. Our missing backup arrived at last, I supposed. Arriving too fucking late.

I listened for the sound of Doyle's Browning in the barrage, tried to pick out Doyle's voice from the tumult coming from the ramshackle cottage under siege. I struggled to hear Doyle's steps in the quiet that followed. And then Doyle was there at my side, checking my wounds, applying pressure to my side. Hurt worse than the bullet, that pressure, but I clenched my teeth and took it.

"Did you get them?" I asked.

"Yeah." Doyle kept his eyes down, concentrating on stopping the blood leaking between his fingers. My blood.

"You can mention that at my memorial service."

"Christ, Bodie--” Doyle broke off and swallowed hard once before continuing. "You're not going to need a fucking memorial service. There's an ambulance on the way. Cowley called it himself. He'll kill you if you die before it gets here."

"Wouldn't want to disappoint the Cow."

"Be worse if you disappoint me," Doyle said.

"I'd never do that, Ray."

"Then shut up and hold on."

I shut up. And though I was sure it wasn't quite what Doyle meant, I grabbed hold of his arm and didn't let go. Not until they got me to the hospital, and even then not until they put me under to cut me open.

When he woke up, I was holding Bodie's hand. Bloody soft of me, but I couldn't help myself. It had been a close call and that always put me on edge. They’d told me they'd nearly lost him a few times during the surgery. Nearly stopped his heart as they carved him up trying to get all the bullet fragments out. Put a few more scars on that beautiful hide of his, too.

When they let me into the hospital room, he looked bloody awful: tubes down his nose, needles in his arms, drains drawing blood and pus out of his belly. At least they didn't have him on a ventilator. When I'd got shot, I'd hated that thing. Made me feel like I was suffocating, even though I'd known it was doing my breathing for me. I'd kept pulling the tubes out, and then nearly dying on them when my lungs had tried to pack it in.

I sat beside him, close as I could get without crawling into the bed with him, and held his hand as tightly as he'd held my arm in the ambulance. Tighter, even. I kept thinking about how he'd looked in those woods, covered in mud, fighting to hide the pain. First time I've ever seen him really scared. I mean, he'll tell me he's scared, but I've never seen it before. Not like that. Not even when he'd been stabbed.

His eyes fluttered open ten hours and twenty-one minutes after they brought him out of surgery, and two minutes after that for him to finally focus on me and speak.

"You look bloody awful." Never very tactful, my Bodie.

"So do you." Tact's never been my strong point either.

"Am I going to need a memorial service?" I could barely hear him, his voice quiet and raw. Hurts like a bastard to talk with a tube down your throat, I know.

"Not this time," I said, anger fusing with fear at the thought of losing him. "Not ever, if I have anything to say about it."

"Everyone dies, Ray," he said and he squeezed my hand. "But it's good to have someone remember you."

"I'd remember you, Bodie. Couldn't forget you. Not ever." I felt a bit naff, saying that, but I know it was the right thing to do. I know it because the stupid bastard smiled then. Smiled and closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep.

I touched his face, his cheek too pale even for Bodie, but at least no longer encrusted with mud. I'd get him through this like he'd got me through being shot. Cosset him when he felt fragile, bully him when he tried to wheedle out of his physio. Then, when he was ready, we'd figure out what we had to do to make it out of CI5 without anymore scars on our hides. What we had to do so that one of us wasn't left with nothing more than a memory of the other.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, adrenaline no longer enough to keep me going as exhaustion mixed with relief. I put my head down on Bodie's bed, meaning only to rest there for a minute, but the sleep I'd been putting off for the better part of two days finally reached out and claimed me.

It's never easy to lose a man. Lose one man and I start thinking of all the others lost, all the way back to my first command. Back before that, even, to when I was a stupid wee boy, running off to Spain to fight the good fight. Lose one man and I see every face, remember every name: curse of a long life and a longer memory.

I'd prepared myself to lose Bodie this time. I'd seen men like that before in the mountains of Spain and the fields of France, gut shot and bleeding and near drowning in the mud. But those other men hadn't had Doyle at their side. Doyle had stopped the worst of the bleeding and kept him from shock until the ambulance crew had arrived and taken over. Doyle had badgered Bodie into staying with us.

I was never so relieved as when the hospital called to tell me the lad was out of danger. That he'd be a while healing, but he'd make a full recovery. I hung up the phone and said a prayer to the less than merciful God of my childhood. I gave thanks I wouldn't have to walk the halls of CI5 surrounded by agents mourning the death of one of their own. Wouldn't have to keep watch over Doyle, wondering which way he'd jump with Bodie in the ground. Wouldn't have to add another name to the list of names the squad raised a glass to on Poppy Day, another fallen soldier in an unacknowledged war.

It was hours more before I made it to the hospital--there'd been the local constabulary to placate, and suspects to interrogate--but make it I finally did. Only to find the pair of them fast asleep, Bodie in his hospital bed, and Doyle with his head down beside him.

Sleep hadn't taken years off them, it had added them on. They both looked older than they'd done even three days ago. The grey at Doyle's temples was more pronounced--if he wasn't careful, he'd find himself looking distinguished--and the pain had taken its toll on Bodie, making him look drained and wan. I'd spent so long thinking of them as young men, it was shocking to realize they weren't. To realize they were among my most senior agents. To realize mortality was hunting us all.

It brought home to me yet again why remembrance was so important. It made us reflect on the sacrifices of those who'd gone before, made us value the worth of those still alive. Made me realize how impossible it was to think about the world without a Bodie in it, without someone bold enough to make tasteless jokes in front of the Home Secretary. And nearly as impossible without Doyle, troubling my conscience when the job turned rank.

I crept out of the room, taking care not to disturb either of them. I'd come back when they were awake, when they were less vulnerable. And when they were ready, I'd take them out to my club, and buy them a round so we could all lift a glass of pure malt with them to the comrades we'd all seen fall over the years.