Chapter Text
The man he had come to see, a Doctor Neil Buchanan, was just the kind of man you would want for a situation such as the one John found himself in. He was tall but not imposingly so, somewhat broad with a hint of not too bad a physique hiding under a good layer of flab. Though greying, his face held a boyish feel that put you at ease. His hands were big, too, and when he held out one in greeting, John found it was warm.
“So, Doctor Watson,” he said once they were both seated, on either side of his oak desk. His voice not quite as deep with expected but it had an unmistakable Scottish accent. “What brings you to my clinic? Lilly tells me you sounded quite urgent when you made the appointment.”
John sighed. There was no point in trying to dally, though, and so he pulled off the flat cap he was wearing. The bumps had grown since he’d spotted them and people had begun to give him slightly odd looks. He really couldn’t blame them, as they did not look much like any sort of bump on the head anymore, but it didn’t mean they didn’t bother him.
Buchanan spotted the problem straight away. Not that that was in itself much of an accomplishment, as he was not just an orthopaedic specialist but one who had further specialized in abnormal bone growth and bone deformities. That seemed to John to be the best possible candidate to hopefully help him. If it wasn’t a bone deformity, then…
“May I?” Buchanan asked politely, looking the blond in the eye.
John bit back the sarcastic comment on the tip of his tongue and merely nodded instead.
The other man moved close enough to get a better look, putting on his glasses as he did so. He looked at them closely then motioned for John to tilt his head more towards the light. Once that was done, he leaned even closer. Then he reached out a hand and pressed on one protuberance.
John couldn’t help the wince that caused. They had not gotten less aching as they had…grown, for lack of a less disturbing word, even though they had become slightly less springy, which was worrying in and of itself.
“When did this happen?” Buchanan asked, professionally calm as he did the examination.
“I don’t know,” John answered truthfully. “I spotted them just before I called here but I’ve been having odd headaches for at least a few weeks now. I didn’t think much of them, really, you know, not when they were just headaches.”
“And is that then the curse of the doctorly mind or just good old male stubbornness and refusal to make a fuss?” the specialist said, clearly just thinking aloud. For some reason, the blond liked that quirk and smiled.
“I can see why you came here,” Buchanan said once he had finished the examination, which had involved far too much prodding for John’s liking. “I would like to do further examination at a later date but it does seem as though you have something growing from your skull rather than some sort of internal trauma pushing at the skull or even having broken through.”
“Yeah, I figured as much myself. I did treat men in the field.”
The other man raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise. “Really? My sister is on her third tour, says it doesn’t compare to anything she did back...anyway, I wasn’t doubting your skills of observation or expertise, Doctor Watson. To be frank, I’m somewhat puzzled myself. It feels as if there’s cartilage under there – “
“Yeah, I noticed. That’s why I made the appointment.”
“Let me finish, please. That is puzzling on its own but what’s more worrying is that I can feel what can only be bone down towards the base and it doesn’t seem to be just the skull connecting with the new growth. I would like to take a few X-rays to confirm that before you go, if you don’t mind.”
John looked at Buchanan as though the man was pulling his leg somehow. “Bone?” he asked, the smallest of disbelieving smiles on his lips as his brow furrowed. “Are you seriously trying to say that I’m growing bones out of my skull?”
The specialist only raised one eyebrow in return. “You can believe the cartilage but not the bone?”
“Quite frankly, I’m still waiting to wake up any moment and find out I’ve been down with the worst fever I’ve ever had and this was all a bloody fever dream. But since I’m rarely that bleeding lucky, I would be very happy if the expert I go to could at least try not to take the piss!” His voice had risen towards the end and he took several deep breaths to try and calm down a little.
“I understand that this might be a bit much to take in, especially all at once. I assure you, though, that we will do everything possible to understand what has happened and how it can be remedied. Now, if we take the X-rays straight away, they should at least give us a clearer idea of just what we are dealing with.”
“Yeah, alright,” John said. He rose and followed the specialist out the door towards the specially designed X-ray room. “Thanks for…well...”
Buchanan smiled again. “No problem. You’re handling this far better than I ever could, I think.”
The way home went by in a sort of blur for John. He clutched the envelope containing his copies of the X-rays that had been taken all the way, his eyes not taking any a lot of what went on around him.
They were real. There was no doubting it once you looked at the images in the envelope. He had bones covered in cartilage growing out of his skull and it was only a matter of time before they broke through the skin.
He’d scheduled another appointment before he left the clinic, two weeks from then. Truth be told, however, he had half a mind not to go. Not only because of the expense of further appointments, though the cost of the X-rays was undoubtedly going to put a bit of a strain on his finances, but because he felt reasonably certain that nothing Doctor Buchanan or anyone else could do would fix it.
It clearly wasn’t going away on its own, either, though; given that it was bone, and the X-rays confirmed that rather conclusively, the only solution that John could see was to either cut it off or leave it be.
Neither option appealed.
As he lay in his bed that night, staring up at the ceiling while his fingers traced patterns over his stomach, he thought about what he then wanted to do instead as well as what might have caused it.
His stomach was churning but he wasn’t entirely sure it had anything to do with his mental unease. He hadn’t had much to eat that it could disagree with, either, so he was at a bit of a loss to what was the cause.
Something clicked then. His stomach had been bothering him for far longer than the headaches had and he hadn’t thought much of that. They had hurt more or less in tandem when the headaches had arrived, however, which should have been a clue.
Nothing had been the matter before he had gone down to Cornwall and ever since then, he had felt…off, somehow, for lack of a better word. Then the nausea, vomiting and general stomach aches had started, intensifying the feeling of ‘off’, and the headaches had only cemented it all.
Knowing, or at least suspecting, that those symptoms were connected did not help much in and of itself. Suspecting that they in turn had something to do with what had happened on Midsummer’s Eve was slightly better but not a lot. What he needed was something more tangible.
And what exactly would you call the protuberances on your head if not horrifically tangible proof? What more do you need to know that something’s gone wrong for you and that’s it’s tied up with that whole incident?
“Proof that the things and the stomach aches really are connected, perhaps?” John answered out loud, too preoccupied to notice that he had indeed said it aloud. “The bumps are odd, yeah, but they don’t explain the rest of it – and there’s Bill’s persistent attempts to sniff me, too, come to think of it.”
Alright, then. You want more proof that something more happened that night that affected your belly? Then go and get a sonogram. That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it? That you have it and there’s something there besides just fat.
John swallowed then firmly pushed the thought aside. There wasn’t going to be anything in there. He was a man through and through, there was nowhere inside of him where…something could grow in the first place.
Then what was the problem making an appointment for a sonogram? If he was so very certain that nothing was going to be in there, why was he so reluctant to get it checked?
Not much point in wasting money on a sonogram if you know nothing’s in there, he thought, and I really can’t see the wonderful NHS shilling out for a man wanting one, just for the hell of it in their eyes.
But what else could he do? Go back down to Cornwall, find the mad bugger with the pale eyes and wild hair and demand to know that he had done to him?
The blond turned over onto his side, as his backside throbbed somewhat and lying on his back seemed to aggravate it.
Who even said the man would be there? For all John knew, if he went back to Cornwall now, he would find that the man had moved back to wherever he himself had come from with no plans of ever coming back, much like the doctor himself. He didn’t even know the man’s name so it was just about impossible to ask people in the area whether they had seen him. Tall men with dark hair, pale eyes and likewise skin couldn’t exactly be uncommon, even down there.
They’ll probably think I’m looking for my own Poldark, knowing my blooming luck, he mused to himself.
The only thing he was completely sure of was that he hadn’t imagined it all in his drink-fuelled haze. If his missing clothes the next morning hadn’t been a clue, then the throbbing in his backside and the countless marks left by a multitude of lips, teeth and nails most decidedly were. Irrefutably so, which he didn’t know whether was a good or a bad thing.
But it hadn’t only been the lanky git that had been there, had it? He’d unquestionably been the one in charge, yes, but there had been so many others around that bonfire. Granted, John’s memory of the whole thing was hazy at best and a good deal of them had been wearing masks, to boot. Still, there had to be someone still left in one of the villages who had either been there or had noticed something useful.
Of course, there was also the distinct possibility that he would be questioned or even arrested by the police for participation in an act of vandalism. He highly doubted it, if he phrased his questions right, but it was something to keep in mind.
That’s it, then, is it? I’ve decided to go, just like that? Not that I’ve got many other options left to me, though, so I guess I’ve got to. What the hell am I going to tell Sarah, though? I can’t just bail on my shifts at the surgery once again because I want to go play Poirot down on the coast. Not if I want to have a job when I get back, anyway.
Sarah knew he’d been having those headaches on top of his stomach issues and she had seen the bumps, equally horrified and fascinated by them. That was why she’d given him the day off to see the specialist. She also knew about the whole thing with Harry and Clara. It might not be that hard to convince her that something else had come up in relations to them and that he needed to go and stay down there for at least a few days.
For some reason, he didn’t think that the explanation that he needed to go and find a tall, dark stranger who he’d had a one-night-stand with in the blooming forests of Cornwall would go down overly well, even with Sarah who was normally very understanding.
He contemplated giving Clara a call to see how she was doing and maybe have another go at convincing her to leave his sister for good. It would probably be better overall if his reason for going was genuine, too.
In the end, he decided against it, though. The likelihood of him managing it this time was minute, to say the least, and he didn’t want to alert Harry to the fact that he might be returning. She hadn’t taken well to the fact that he had come down the last time and, sadly, Clara had taken the brunt of that unhappiness. Again. There was no point in risking that again just so he wouldn’t feel guilty about his reasons for asking for time off.
Mind made up and mentally exhausted by the entire day, he drifted off to sleep. His sleep was riddled with dreams of pale eyes, wild curls, small grabbing hands and laughter, none of which he remembered when he woke up.
The trip down on the train seemed to last forever compared to the last time. Then again, that was hardly surprising when his mind had been filled with overwhelming anger at his sister and dread over just how bad a state Clara was in.
Now, even though he’d had time to pick the train with the shortest travel time this time around, he had neither of those to distract him. All he had was the uncertainty and the worry but they were more of an uneasy sensation in the pit of his stomach rather than all-consuming feelings.
Then again, that might just be his stomach acting up again.
It had continued to grow slowly but steadily and now, by late September, it had grown to a point where he could no longer pretend it wasn’t there. Especially not when he had had to buy a few shirts that were a size up for him and they were still a decidedly snug fit over his stomach. Thankfully, he always bought jumpers that were of good enough quality to manage the extra stretch without completely warping out of shape.
The growth had been in spite of John’s revised, healthy diet and his numerous small ways of exercising and what was more, it had been growing at such a constant rate that the likelihood of it being merely steadily accumulated fat was diminishing at about the same rate the belly was growing.
Much as he tried to, though, he had also found himself unable to stop his habit of rubbing the growing bump. It seemed to soothe it when he did so and since it wasn’t going away for the foreseeable future, he might as well just let it go and do it.
He felt something tug at his sleeve rather insistently. Blinking to clear his thoughts, he turned his head to find a small girl of five or six standing in front of the empty seat beside him, looking intently at him.
“What?” he asked, probably in more of a bark than he intended to. It wasn’t the girl’s fault he was feeling uncertain and pissed over feeling uncertain, he shouldn’t take it out on her.
She blinked then frowned at the tone. Then she seemed to mentally shrug, as if this was just another example of grown-ups being odd. She crawled up onto the empty seat beside him and sat down with her legs crossed and her hands resting on the armrest in the middle.
He was about to ask what she wanted when she smiled a big smile that would have been toothy except that she was clearly at the age where she was losing her baby teeth. Either that or the tooth fairy was getting desperate for small teeth.
“You’re lonely,” she declared. She announced it as though it was both a grand revelation and the most logical conclusion in the world.
“Yeah?” John said, sitting up properly and facing her. At least she was something to pass the time with, and much better than his own thoughts. “And what exactly do you base that deduction on?”
He expected her to reply with something simple and obvious, like ‘you’re sitting all alone’ or ‘you don’t talk to anyone’. What she did say, however, threw him off.
“Well,” she began. She held up a hand and counted off fingers as she began to list things. “You don’t look at anyone, even when they try to look at you. No calls or text on your phone, for hours. You look out the window and you sigh –, “ here she demonstrated by sighing dramatically herself, “and you don’t wear a wedding ring.”
She delivered the last deduction with an air of finality, her coup de grâce.
“A wedding ring doesn’t mean you can’t be lonely,” he pointed out. “Or that you can’t be happy without one.”
She paused to digest this, once again frowning. “I s’pose,” she conceded eventually, looking put out about it. “You’re still lonely, though – and you shouldn’t be having a baby when you haven’t got a wedding ring.”
He was about to point out that those two weren’t connected either when something she said struck him. “Hang on, what do you mean, having a baby? I’m a man, I can’t have a baby. Not on my own, at least. I’m not having a baby,” he said, with emphasis.
“You are.”
“No, I’m not.” He was trying hard to keep his voice down low so as not to alarm anyone. That and shouting at a little girl was hardly commendable, either. “Why would you say that?”
“Because you’ve got a baby belly,” she said, as if that was all the proof she needed. She leaned forward and patted his stomach with one tiny hand.
He looked down at it, guiltily noting that he still had a hand on his stomach, and then looked back up at her. He smiled, eased a bit. “Ah. No, that’s just fat, love. Men usually get fat there when they get older.”
She shook her head, her long, light brown hair flying about her face as she did so. “No,” she said firmly. “My uncle Mike has a belly like that, it’s bigger but it’s soft. A baby belly is higher and harder. Like my mother had when she had my little sister.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “That’s why I’m here. She’s making so much noise.”
“So, you decided to run away, then?” he asked with a small wink.
He tried not to let on that she had pointed out something that he had overlooked, possibly wilfully so, because he didn’t want to face the reality.
The way his stomach had grown did not look like a belly filled with only fat; it was indeed too high and with the wrong sort of give. That sort only came with a child growing inside. The evidence was right there, irrefutable and blooming visible, despite the impossibility of such a thing.
He had gone and done the impossible by getting knocked up by a stranger while under the influence of God knew only what and now he was going to find him and what? Demand to take it back?
He felt a slightly hysterical laughter wanting to bubble up.
“Millie!” a female voice came from the back of the carriage, interrupting his already scrambled thoughts. There was the sound of shoes walking swiftly across carpeted floor and then a woman stood in the aisle right next to where John and, presumably, Millie sat.
“Millie, what have I told you about running off like that?” the woman scolded, her hands on her hips and her blouse obviously done having been closed back up.
She turned to John, who thanked whoever was listening up above that the girl had taken her hand back. That would have set off unnecessary alarm bells.
“I’m so sorry. She does this sometimes, seeks out complete strangers to talk to and doesn’t let them go once she’s found them. I hope she hasn’t been too horrible.”
“I’m never horrible!” the little girl said crossly, turning to her mother. “He was feeling lonely and so I helped him.”
“She really hasn’t,” John assured, flashing a smile that he didn’t really feel. He turned his attention back to Millie. “Best go with you mom, now, love. You don’t need to look after me anymore, I’m fine.”
The girl looked decidedly unconvinced but eventually let herself being dragged away back to where her family was sitting, in another carriage. She waved all the way and John waved back until she was out of sight.
Letting his head fall back against the headrest of the seat, he stared up at the ceiling. The encounter hadn’t quite provided the distraction he’d thought it would and what it had brought instead wasn’t something that he had particularly wanted to have confirmed.
So…I should have gotten that sonogram after all. That way I might have known whether it was at least a healthy baby or not.
When he got off at the platform at Truro, over seven hours after the train had left Paddington, his backpack slung over his shoulder, he was surprised to find that the little girl and her family also got off there. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to notice him getting off further down and so he was able to leave without incident.
Not that he disliked her. He just didn’t want her to start blabbering about him having a baby in front of a group of grown-ups. Alright, they were hardly going to believe her but he was feeling tired enough as it was without having to deal with that as well.
No, what you don’t want to deal with is just other people, his mind supplied. Never thought you’d turn into such an antisocial person, did you?
He wasn’t antisocial. He just…didn’t feel like dealing with the banalities of normal life all the time, either. There was enough of that at work.
Which you are shirking completely and have given your employer a load of codswallop for avoiding.
“It’s only going to be a few days,” he muttered under his breath, as if that was going to convince him.
As he went off in search of somewhere to stay for the night, he thought he saw the shape of someone vaguely familiar out of the corner of his eye. What to do?
On the one hand, there had been several occasions back in London, after he’d come back, where this exact thing had happened, only for it to be a mere trick of the mind when he focused on it. On the other, that had been back in London and the enormous mass of copper curls he thought he’d seen would make sense to find down here. It was far more likely that, if she wasn’t merely something conjured by his mind in his drunken haze, that she would live down here and that he would bump into her. Even if the likelihood was very small at best, given the size of the population in Truro and the distance to the forest he had gotten lost into.
He turned his head to look, slowly, but all he got was a glimpse of the curls as they disappeared, once again, around a corner. However, before he began to follow, he registered that those curls were rather more on the brown side rather than ginger.
“Bloody well losing my marbles as well as turning into a physical impossibility,” he muttered with a shake of the head. Only consolation on that score was that at least they’d match.
He pulled at the brim of the flat cap he’d taken to wearing whenever he was out to make sure it was still sitting securely. It had been a bit of an issue at the surgery, at least at first, as Sarah had taken not taking kindly to it, and he had eventually had to take it off and show her the bumps, bracing himself for her reaction.
Unexpectedly, though, all she’d done was to give a quiet noise of surprise while her expression turned to one of caring concern.
“That’s why you needed the day off for the orthopaedic specialist?” she’d asked quietly and he’d nodded. “I thought it was your knee or something.”
“I wish,” he’d said. “I’m rarely that lucky, though.”
“True,” she’d conceded. Then she’d smiled. “Get that awful cap back on, you look absolutely ridiculous with those.”
He smiled at the memory and set off to find a relatively cheap B&B for the night. It was getting dark outside and he’d do better searching if he had some actual sleep in a bed before he started the trek to general area of his search.
There was one good thing to be said for this time, though. He at least knew in approximately what area he needed to ask and search; the first village he’d come to when he’d eventually made it out of the forest had had at least a pub and a B&B. If nothing else, they could tell him if some of the people dancing around the fire had stayed with them. Hell, there might even be a face or two he recognized from that night.
Yeah, ‘cause it’s going to be a right doddle recognizing someone from only the bottom part of their face, if there was even that much.
“Excuse me?”
“Yes, sir, can I help you?” the landlord of the pub answered in a voice that was too cheery to be purely to please the customer. “Hang on, I’ve seen you before somewhere. Midsummer day, was it?”
John blinked. He had been in there when he’d gotten back and since he had been wearing some rather odd clothes, he might have stood out more than the average Joe in the pub but still. Not much point in denying it, though, quite the opposite.
“You’ve got one hell of a good memory there. Yeah, it was.”
The middle-aged, though still handsome, man grinned. “Pays to have, sir. Guests feel more welcome and special if you remember their names and their face – and it’s easier to know whether the people coming were troublemakers the last time they came.”
“I bet. I’m John, by the way.”
“Hello, John, nice to see you again – and put a name to the face. As I recall, you looked a bit shaken up when you came in and wasn’t too talkative.”
“Ah, no, I probably wasn’t,” John conceded. Truth be told, he’d felt off having that many people around him so soon after all that had happened. “Had a bit of a…well, a not un-interesting Midsummer Eve. Didn’t end quite the way I expected.”
The landlord nodded slowly and solemnly, as though he understood and understood far more than just what the surface-level implied. John couldn’t tell whether that was unsettling or not.
This is Cornwall, after all, and Midsummer Eve is special, even now. I would be more surprised if you didn’t have an…interesting night of it,” he said and the slight pause was oddly pregnant, “especially given where you’d come from.”
“Yeah?” John said in a non-committal way, his face settling into a careful blank expression. “Didn’t know you had panorama windows in this pub. Must’ve been expensive to install.”
The other man frowned. His expression cleared when he worked out what the doctor meant. “Oh, I didn’t need a window to spot that you’d come from the forest. Your clothes gave that away.”
At that, it was John’s turn to frown in incomprehension. “What?”
The landlord leaned over the countertop and lowered his voice so that the scant number of punters in the pub couldn’t hear. Hopefully. “It hasn’t happened in my time, at least not as far as I’m aware, but there’s been stories about strange goings-on in the forest for centuries. Sometimes people disappear into the forest around certain times, you know, summer and winter solstice, Halloween, that sort of thing. Most often, they come back, either days or months later, but sometimes they don’t, and even if they do, they come back changed, in one way or the other.”
John almost laughed at that. As it was, he had difficulty keeping an amused smile off his face. “That’s classic folk tale warnings, though, isn’t it? Don’t go out into the unknown or you’ll be snatched by the fairy folk.”
“Perhaps,” the landlord acknowledged with a bit of a sheepish smile. “That’s what I always thought, too, even when my nan claimed it had happened to her sister who’d never come back. But then you turned up in that frankly ludicrous combination of clothes, unwilling to speak and with this peculiar look to you.”
“What, like I’d been fairy-touched? Come on!”
“Why were you dressed like somebody who raided the dress up box for every spare bit of clothing, then?” the other man countered, raising an eyebrow. “You don’t exactly look the type.”
John opened his mouth to argue then paused. “I…someone had stolen all my clothes except my shoes.”
“And just conveniently left you a greatcoat from world war two to cover up with instead? Oddly considerate thieves.”
“Yeah, alright. To be honest, I don’t remember much and what I do remember doesn’t make much sense.”
“Sounds about right from the other things I heard, yeah. Look, I know it does seem very farfetched and like I’m a sandwich short of a picnic by saying it. I fully admit that. But as I said, when you came in back then, you fit that story to a bleeding tee. If you don’t believe me, just go back to the forest and see.”
John was about to argue further but then he realized the man was going a bit far for this to be a mere prank and besides, he had been planning to go back to that forest to do some research, anyway.
He smiled to try and ease the tension between them.
“I was planning on that. I’m actually trying to track someone from that night and I hoped you might’ve seen him.”
“I see a lot of people, mate.”
“Yeah, and you’ve just told me you’ve got a memory for faces. Please help me out here, then I’ll be out of your hair, I promise.”
The landlord smiled. “Oh, no. You ain’t going anywhere until you’ve had some of the local beer, mate. That’s final.”
As he trekked through the forest once again, John was not only grateful it was only early afternoon, he also had an odd sense of déjà vu. Not that he recognized the individual trees or anything daft like that but there was a definite sense of familiarity and security that hadn’t been there, either when he’d walked out of there afterwards or when he’d been led there by the curly-haired girl.
“Probably should have asked after her rather than the other fellow,” he muttered under his breath, navigating south towards the clearing he’d been in. “Her he might have seen.”
Not that he doubted the landlord claiming not to know the man. He was merely frustrated that his pessimistic prediction that he’d ask around for a man he didn’t know the name of had indeed come true. What was more, the clearing seemed to be no nearer, despite him having walked for about as long as he reckoned he had on the way out of there.
Just as he was getting fed up with this whole endeavour and had started to turn back the way he’d come, however, he spotted a figure leaning against a tree some distance away, apparently watching him.
It wasn’t tall enough to be the man with the pale eyes and the cupid bow lips but the scant sunlight there was did dance in the mass of distinctive copper curls.
That just about did it for John. This time, she wouldn’t be able to run away or wiggle out of questions. He was going to get to the bottom of what had happened, whether she wanted to help or not.
He didn’t shout or otherwise call out to her. Instead, he just started to run towards the figure who hadn’t moved. Yet.
In his haste to get to her before she ran off or disappeared, though, he failed to take the unevenness of the ground into account. The hard toe of his boot hit something under the dead leaves and he stumbled. He did manage to catch hold of a branch to steady himself but unfortunately for him, the branch was slippery with wet and his grip wasn’t quite firm enough.
Consequently, he went tumbling to the ground on his back, head hitting something on the way.
At least landing on my back means I haven’t hurt the baby, was his muzzy thought before unconsciousness claimed him.