Work Text:
The piano is not firewood yet
But the cold does get cold
So it soon might be that
I'll take it apart, call up my friends
And we'll warm up our hands by the fire
Don't look so shocked
Don't judge so harsh
You don't know
You are only spying
Everyone knows it's going to hurt
But at least we'll get hurt trying
The clinic is already beyond saving by the time Luka gets back from Kinshasa, the water-weathered timbers now blackened by the hungry flames that lick toward the sky in livid tendrils. He staggers out of the truck on shaking legs, limbs gone suddenly numb. There is a crowd near the treeline where all the patients were evidently evacuated, and a smaller group of the able-bodied standing nearer the clinic who had tried in vain to put out the flames, buckets and tubs now dangling from fingers lax with shock and resignation.
Luka spots Angelique standing too near the blazing door, face utterly blank as she holds the arms of a weeping Gillian, as if she had been preventing her from running back inside. His legs carry him over without much input from his reeling mind.
"What happened?" he hears himself ask, eyes locked on the fiery maw of the once-welcoming doorway as the heat of it hits his face.
Angelique looks at him without really seeing him. Her voice comes out reedy and flat. "He just ran inside. I couldn't stop him. He just ran inside."
Fear flashes through him, bringing clarity like a slap to the face. "Who?" He looks around, scanning the crowd of dark faces. "Angelique!" He grabs her shoulders and shakes her. "Angelique, where is Carter?"
But it's Gillian who answers, her voice a choked wail. "He went inside after Mukisa."
"When? Gillian, when?"
She scrubs her forearm over her wet eyes. "A few minutes ago. But Luka—"
He's already running.
"You can't go in there, now! They think the roof is about to go! Luka!"
He has just enough presence of mind to pull off his overshirt and tie it around his mouth as he crouches to enter the inferno that was his home when he left just two days ago. The heat immediately shocks his arms where his T-shirt leaves his skin exposed, broils his forehead above his makeshift mask. Even with the shield of his overshirt, the smoke is suffocating. His eyes burn as he scans the main room, searching for his friend through the veil of flames and smoke.
"Carter!" His voice is barely audible over the fire's roar and the moaning of the beams overhead as they're eaten alive. "Carter!"
He coughs, tears already streaming down his cheeks, and rounds the corner to the next ward only to be met with a wall of fire. He raises his arms protectively, standing on his toes to peer over the crackling flames.
There.
Next to one of the beds lies a crumpled figure, sprawled on the floor and clad in a familiar linen shirt.
Luka takes a deep breath, coughs, tucks his arms to his chest, and barrels through the flames. His sleeve and pant leg catch fire, but he pats them out before the flames can do much damage and scrambles to the bed, noting for the first time the old man lying in it.
Mukisa had just celebrated his eighty-second birthday at the clinic last week, his age nothing short of a miracle in this harsh corner of the world. The elder had been admitted with a serious PCP just days afterward. When Luka left him two days ago, the treatments appeared to be working and Mukisa was improving.
And now…
His pulse is nothing more than a whisper beneath Luka's fingertips, the barely-there kiss of butterfly's wings. When he presses his head to the man's chest, he is met only with agonal rasping.
"I'm sorry," Luka whispers, and turns back to the man he can still save. He hopes. "Carter." The downed man responds to neither voice nor touch, his skin flushed with the heat—Luka has never known heat like his; his skin feels as if it might melt—and streaked with soot. "Okay, come on, Carter. I've got you," he assures his unhearing friend, grabbing his arms and hauling his inert and uncooperative form into a sitting position before hoisting him over his shoulders and turning back the way he came, staggering a bit before Carter's weight settles into place.
He needs air. His chest heaves with the frenzy of his need, his lungs and throat burn with the smoke, and his fingers and feet prickle for lack of oxygen.
The wall of fire he'd braved not a minute ago has already grown taller and thicker. Somehow, the idea of carrying Carter through it is much more daunting than rushing through it alone. But the ward behind them is quickly being consumed, and a loud crack from the ceiling draws his attention to the consuming river of fire above them. Another crack and flaming debris rains down on them.
They have no choice.
Luka grasps Carter's arm and leg tighter and runs. The heat is so scalding he can't tell if the flames reached him or not, but he has no time to find out. A floorboard gives way beneath him and he staggers, nearly dropping Carter before regaining his feet and then nearly losing his balance as Carter's leaden limbs sway with the sudden motion.
The faint light of the doorway appears, barely visible through the smoke, but the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. They're going to make it.
The ceiling creaks ominously.
They're going to make it, they're going to make it, they're going to make it—
Luka bursts through the doorway and out into the cool, fresh air, stumbling down the steps and through the grass to a safe distance. He falls to his knees and deposits Carter on the ground as gently as he can before tearing the shirt away from his face and sucking in long, deep breaths between coughs.
Angelique and Gillian materialize next to him, Gillian taking his face in her hands, saying something to him, but his eyes are fixed on Carter, where Angelique looks him over. She meets his eyes, falling back on her butt in the grass as relief washes over her features. She nods.
He's alive.
Luka reaches out soot-stained and trembling fingers to rub at Carter's sweaty sternum. He is rewarded with a ragged cough, followed by a heaving breath and another cough. Luka rests his palm on his chest, closing his eyes, taking in the uneven rise and fall of it as one might the rising sun after a moonless night.
Behind him, the clinic lets out a long, eerie groan—the final cry of a dying thing. They all turn, watching as their home sways, shifts, and surrenders to the flames. It's a ridiculous thought, but Luka feels in some way that it held on so he could get Carter out.
"I'm sorry," he whispers and prays Mukisa can hear him.
The Mai-Mai started the fire, Luka learns. A group had come, drunk, jeering and violent, looking for trouble or entertainment. Carter and Angelique had tried to talk them down, only to be beaten to the ground and made to watch at gunpoint as they doused the walls of the clinic in petrol and set it alight. Nearby gunfire had called them away and they did not stay to watch.
How they managed to get nearly everyone out of the clinic, Luka will never know. Gillian shakes her head when he asks, saying she was moving too quickly to remember much until they learned Mukisa was trapped and Carter ran back inside.
Luka is himself exhausted with the dregs of adrenaline, coughing every few breaths, but when a place is offered for Carter to recover, Luka turns down the men who come to help lift him, unable to articulate even to himself the tether that he has in John Carter. To his old life, to his humanity, to his survival. So he carries him himself, nodding at Gillian when she lifts Carter's head so it rests against Luka's neck, taking comfort in the other man's feeble breath puffing against his skin.
She sits with Luka after they get him settled, brushing Carter's hair from his forehead in soft, rhythmic strokes as Luka tends to the burns he hadn't been able to protect him from, makes Luka sit and allow her to tend to his own wounds when he's finished. He hadn't even noticed, the pain of them only a distant hum amidst the clamour of his swirling thoughts.
Angelique joins them as Gillian works, uncharacteristically silent, sitting on the dirt floor and taking a wet cloth to Carter's singed and sooty face, her usually sharp eyes gone soft as though all her armor went up in smoke along with the clinic.
Carter doesn't wake fully until nearly seven hours later.
Evening is settling over the Congo, pink light and the peaceful twinkling of fireflies spilling through the open doorway of the hut where Luka has taken up vigil. He takes a deep breath of the fresh air, his lungs finally calm enough to do so without much more than a scratching sensation.
A faint rasp from the cot next to him draws his attention back to his patient. Slowly, Carter's eyes flutter open to reveal sclerae still red and furious from the smoke, the sheen of accompanying tears making his irises too bright even in the dim light.
"Hey, there," Luka says, his smile tired but true. "Welcome back.
Carter frowns at him. "What—?" The rest of his question is lost in a coughing fit, and Luka helps ease him into a somewhat upright position, propped against a folded blanket and the wall of the hut.
"Take it easy," Luka chides, settling what he hopes is a steadying hand on Carter's chest as if he can ease his misery by touch alone. "You know, I've been meaning to talk to you about your smoking habit. It's bad for your health."
Carter shoots him a look as he catches his breath. "Mukisa?"
Luka looks away.
I couldn't save you both.
The confession almost slips free before Luka catches it. Unburdening himself will only result in additional guilt for Carter. Luka made a soldier's call—the pragmatic one, the realistic one. The only one. But Carter is not a soldier. Carter still believes he can save everyone.
"He didn't make it."
Carter sinks back against his makeshift pillow, jaw going tight as he nods. "The clinic?"
"Gone."
Carter's eyes stray away, vacant the way Angelique's had been.
Luka watches the fireflies through the doorway, giving Carter time and privacy to process.
The crickets begin to sing. Not long after, the frogs.
"You're hurt," Carter says finally, his voice rough with emotion or smoke.
"What?" Luka looks down at the gauze patches on his forearm and the back of his hand. "Oh. It's nothing, they're not very bad. You have a few of those, too."
Carter follows his gaze to the similar patch on his bare shoulder, then down to the one on his bicep. A cautious hand comes up to prod at the one on the side of his neck. "You were there?"
Luka nods. "For the end."
"You came in after us."
Another nod.
Carter drops his gaze, nods himself. He offers his thanks in a brief squeeze of Luka's hand.
"I'm sorry about Mukisa."
Carter shakes his head, turns to watch the fireflies himself. "I'm sorry. I thought we had everyone out. We didn't realize until—I guess I was too late."
"Not your fault."
The younger man's silence is heavy with disbelief. That's a fight for another day.
"It's hot," Carter mumbles eventually.
Luka hums. There's a cool breeze blowing into the hut, keeping the air moving, and the mud walls have long since given up the heat of the afternoon. "You have a fever. You got yourself pretty well cooked in there."
Carter sits up a little straighter, taking in their surroundings. "Where are we?"
A smile returns softly to Luka's face. "Mama Agnes' home. The people in the village volunteered to house all of us and our patients."
Carter's face twists in grief. Luka of all people knows how kindness sears in days of pain. "They shouldn't have to do that."
"No, they shouldn't. But they want to. Accept the kindness, Carter. In war, this is how people stay human."
Carter pulls his knees up and tips forward, resting his arms and face there. "What now?"
"Now…" Luka sighs, watching as the pink light shifts to purple, the sun somewhere at last losing to the horizon. "We do what we can. We rebuild. One piece at a time."
Carter turns to face him, tearful eyes belying his smile. "You make it sound easy."
"No." Luka drops his gaze to stare at the floor. "It's never easy. But it's doable. And it has to be done."
"One piece at a time?"
"One piece at a time. One day at a time." He reaches out, settling a hand on Carter's head, moving his thumb back and forth over his hair. "We'll be okay, John."
Love what you have and you'll have more love
You're not dying
Everyone knows you're going to love
Though there's still no cure for crying