salute [h.s]

fancy being piper clementine styles?

december 28 - a holiday proposal

1D fanfic/Salute Extra

Harry/Piper

The phone call hadn't been long. They'd been talking about stupid things. Nonsense. The shitty weather in London. The scorching heat in South Sudan where Harry was currently working on behalf of the British Army. Some of the latest gossip Piper had heard on her most recent trip to Vauxhall Cross — apparently Q and S had eloped. Her mum's latest attempt to convince her to have grandchildren, Harry's mum giving him the exact same lecture as well. Their mums had to be working together on this. Her and Harry weren't even married yet and they were pleading for grandchildren.

She'd mentioned that to him, that their mums had skipped the marriage step. "So did we," he said in an offhand sort of way. "Have you ever thought about marriage, petal?"

And then the explosion.

Piper had never before experienced the feeling of pure dread and terror, the heart-stopping panic, that she did in that moment. She was standing in the middle of the lobby of Thames House, screaming Harry's name into the phone and praying for a response. When none came, the tears started and they didn't stop the entire time she was sprinting through the building to where she'd just come out of a meeting with Liam and K, the head of MI5. A number of people tried to stop her as she ran through the halls, thinking she was a security threat, but she pushed right past until she was bursting into the conference room she'd vacated only ten minutes earlier. The table that had once seated members of the Department of International Terrorism was now filled with older gentlemen, most of them in military dress. It was clear she was not supposed to be there by the looks on their faces. Liam, however, stood immediately when he caught sight of her, his face drawn in concern.

"Piper, what's —"

"It's Harry," was all she managed to say before she lost it.

She didn't remember much of the day that followed because she was an absolute mess. Liam had excused himself from his meeting and practically carried her out of Thames House. They went back to Vauxhall Cross instead of HQ because Liam had called Louis on the way to get him working on a way to reach Harry and Louis had demanded the use of MI6 resources. Piper had spent most of the day, in the office in Q branch that they'd commandeered, curled up against Zayn who had come when the call went out to the rest of the group. She'd been inconsolable, unable to control the tears. Zayn wasn't quite sure what to do with her so he'd just let her lie in his lap and had rubbed her back gently for hours, until Niall showed up and injected her with a heavy dose of Klonopin that knocked her out.

When she woke next, it was nearly midnight and Louis had managed to track Harry's transmitter to a British military outpost in Juba which he spent the next few hours trying to get in contact with. He'd finally reached someone there and had gotten an update on Harry's situation. He was alive but in critical condition. The explosion had thrown him and he'd hit his head pretty hard. There had been some internal bleeding and he'd been in a coma since he'd entered the hospital. Based on the fact that he'd made it through surgery, the doctor had high hopes for a recovery but it was still up in the air.