A/N: This was the original part of the last chapter, but I hated writing it so much that I almost didn't want to put it in. In fact, I nearly deleted the lot of it in a fit of frustration after the number of times it's been rewritten.

For those who addressed my suspicions about CJ…yes! Thank you! At least now I know it isn't just me. I do like the spontaneous, conflicted James in S1 a lot more than the sidelined but sexy-dad (and more boring) James in S2, because he also just so much more fun to write. But S2 James makes me happy as well, because he's happy and settled with Molly, if only for that reason. I wasn't feeling this at all with Georgie and Elvis, let alone Jamie (whom I pitied, to be honest). But they're no Charles and Molly.

So this really is the end. I mean it. Sorry guys, but I hope you liked this whole one-shot that suddenly grew extensions of itself. CJ and Molls in Afghanistan together—such amazing chemistry!—have made up my favourite bits about the show and anything after that bit gets very difficult and well, uninspiring.

But then, maybe you want this closure.

Thank you so very much for your support and reviews. You astound me.

oOo

A volley of gunshots shatters the tense silence, followed by a volley of furious Pashto and return fire that choke the air.

Keep your head down! Hold your fire!

Her racing thoughts stutter to a stop. A discarded Glock by her side adds to the grey and red mist of confusion and terror.

Her blue gloves, donned an eternity ago, have turned a dull red.

The copious puddles of blood from goat and fallen men, steadily filling the cracks in the parched earth.

She wrenches her eyes from the horror of it, powerless to hold back the immobilising sense of shock that turns life and limb to ice.

Impossible, what she'd just done.

Suddenly, all those lessons and training videos on emergency aid crystallise into one salient point: save, not kill.

A duty of care for loss of life, limb or eye.

That alone pushes the air back into her lungs and galvanises her back into action, long enough to secure a tourniquet around Smurf's arm and to keep pressure on the abdominal wound on the boss's body.

"Stay with me! I need you to stay with me!"

Three Cat A, urgent med-evac required! Repeat, Zero this is amber 3 zero bravo. Emergency med-evac required!

The bridge spins as she staggers and tips forward, next to the boss on her right and Smurf on her left, unable to think of anything but the very present pain that's eclipsing everything else. His wound is half-packed, but she presses hard and finishes the job, refusing to let go even when the blood flow can't seem to be stemmed.

James's body bucks hard beneath her hands, shivering violently as it fights to compensate for the sudden loss of fluids.

He's murmuring in her ear, whispering apologies that she can't fathom, rasping her name and ordering her to save Smurf in a way that makes her think he's convinced he'll bleed out on a disused bridge over a trickling river in the desolated highlands of Afghan.

Her only response is to press harder on the gaping wound, wanting to remind him of the excellent medic he'd once called her who would save the Captain and a disgruntled soldier whose mental state should have been called into question long before this Op had been planned.

"That's Dawes to you, Sir."

Fate versus Molly Dawes.

The medic.

The woman.

She has every intention of trumping the former today, if only to rub it in the boss's face and make him take the piss for believing lady luck when he finally comes around.

Suddenly, she isn't alone anymore, lifted from her awkward crouch on the ground by a number of hands and heaving bodies.

Firm hands try to pry her away from James. They finally succeed, but only by forcibly heaving her off him.

A spray of blood from his open wound makes her yelp in horror, but then there are bodies blocking her line of sight as they rush to the Captain and Smurf, while Kinders presses her down to keep her immobile.

Stubbornly, Molly tries to resist the annoying man. The chatter is near incomprehensible but she's catching snatches of medical terminology that can't bode well for anyone.

"Dawes!" Kinders finally yells into her face in exasperation. "You've taken a hit yourself. Not a bad one, but still a hit. Now stay fucking still! There's nothing more you can do for them."

His order hauls her back from the jagged edge of hysteria.

The whirring blades of the MERT finally register as it hovers above the casualty site, as does the pain in her side that returns with stinging vengeance. Snow dapples very distant peaks in brilliant white, bringing into focus the virtually impassable valley they're in.

Dangles and Nude-Nut help secure her, Smurf and the Captain in the MERT before backing away with a parting shot.

"You've got some balls there, Dawesy."

"I hope you never leave Two Section, Molls. I mean, like ever."

Their awestruck words linger in her head as the figures on the ground finally fade into sand and shadow when the MERT banks a hard right to pull out of the battle zone.

Only when the landscape flattens out with Bastion looming in the distance does she notice Smurf slouching on the opposite side of the MERT and staring grimly out into the distance.

But he isn't her priority.

As concerned as she is for him and that questionable state of mind that'd caused him to lash out the way he did, the only man she has in her sights now is the unconscious figure on the stretcher whom they've only temporarily managed to stabilise.

The medics' grim nods to her offer no reassurance. Their tense silence prickles her skin.

The Boss is far from in the clear.

She wouldn't even blink if she didn't have to, lest he's here one second and gone the next.

Worry and fear threaten to shatter her composure, but the adrenaline high that had kept her going since the valley erupted into violence now keeps the tears at bay.

It's the closest call she has ever had.

oOo

Slowly, they walk down the long, darkened corridor of the hospital towards the waiting area.

"He's going to be alright, Molls."

Smurf relays the news with such betrayal on his face that Molly thinks he wishes for the opposite to happen instead. His very own vocal regrets about the damned alleyway are not her burdens to bear, not when she'd tried to set him straight from the beginning.

They are mates, nonetheless.

Hopefully.

If he can get past trying out every juvenile thing around the lads to get her to notice him the way he wants.

"Smurf," she sighs heavily. "I so badly need him to be alright."

Working through the crush of worry and grief had made it a cracking hell of a week and the tight vise of dread around her chest hadn't loosened until she'd seen the boss herself through the windows of the ICU and heard the reassuring beep of his heart rate monitor.

"Oh, he'll be. The greatest man alive will be," Smurf proclaims sardonically.

The twisted smile that he gives her is bitter and angry, if that is any indication of how far his acceptance of their situation has come.

But Smurf bloody won't get an apology from her, if that's what he is hankering after. No further explanation from her that will placate this jealousy when he hadn't been able to hold his own emotions from the start.

Then again, neither had she nor the Bossman as well.

Mostly she's regretful that Smurf hadn't taken the inadvertent revelation too well. But what had she really expected?

"I understand if you hate me," she starts out, then stops when he gives her a sullen look that warns her against blathering on.

"Some things you just can't fight."

Smurf wanders off on his own, his gait still awkward with the sling.

"No, you can't," she agrees in a soft whisper, shaking her head at a stinging thought that sweeps in from nowhere. "Maybe it's fate."

Maybe there's more credence to the boss's weird trust in lady luck than they'd all like to think. Who bloody knows?

Molly returns to James's ward in the opposite direction in time to see the doctor leaving the room, then sneaks in before the door shuts fully.

Seeing him breathing and alive is helping her to piece together the jigsaw her fragmented thoughts had become as they moved him from Bastion to Birmingham as she stayed behind—her injuries had been deemed merely flesh deep—along with the rest of the lads.

The boss is barely awake but the stare he levels at her seems lucid and intimate enough. It sets her gritty eyes hotly watering, softening the white edges of his room into blurred blobs of colour that shift everything out of focus.

"Morphine. I think you aren't real."

And that's the first thing he says?

Relief at his lack of coherence nearly sends her to her knees as a laugh bubbles out of her.

"How you feeling, Sir? Scared the shit out of me."

The sides of his lips twitch. "And that's how I know it's you. Good to see you too, Dawes."

She decides to keep mum about her own injury, reaching out instead to take his hand.

The small contact alone pulls back the seductive memory of unbridled need, the months of denial and finally, the hard slide of sweat-slicked skin. Yet it also anchors her to the idea that he'll actually live when that had merely been a flickering, desperate hope only a few hours ago.

"You did, you know. I thought it was the end."

"I know. And I'm sorry."

A multitude of words and emotions are implicit in the brevity of that response. But is there any form of reassurance that she can give that he wouldn't reject?

"You didn't fail anyone."

James shakes his head tiredly, refusing her absolution.

"I did. But I couldn't have done anything differently had I tried," he pauses deliberately to look at her. "Wouldn't have wanted to."

She understands it all—the disorientation that a fundamental shift in beliefs can bring and how it will change a person's life in ways that she hasn't even fully grasped, because being with him, having served alongside him had done just that.

That, however, will have to be a conversation for another day.

"I…I'm just glad you're going to be alright."

"I will be." He nods faintly at her assessment and shuts his eyes. "We will be."

She watches as he succumbs to sleep with his fingers still clutched tightly in hers and stays until the last rays of the winter sun give way to the inky hues of night.

-Fin