The one time John Watson truly opened up to his therapist, he had exploded. He told her everything she never wanted to know. In short, he talked about the war. What else? It was how all things began.
He had started with a question.
"Do you know what the difference between living and surviving is, Ella?"
She had shaken her head, totally at a loss.
He had leaned forward in his chair, intent on her face and every emotion that would map a wrinkle in it.
"Surviving is...just getting by. The bare necessities to keep a roof over your head, food on the table. Like the dog paddle. Doing the minimum. Living is insane. Living is feeling, living is dying. Living is hate and love and apathy and giving everything you have for really no good reason at all. Living is misery, living is joy, and living is really all you have. It's great, really great."
She didn't know just how to react to that, and it appeared he wasn't expecting her to.
"You know?" John laughed. "All I ever wanted from life was a bit of adventure. Have adventure and a nice quiet job on the side. That's a bit backwards, don't you think?"
Yes, Ella wrote on her pad. It certainly was.
"I think that's a huge reason I joined the military," he mused. "I had nothing keeping me from doing it. I was bored." His voice dripped with revulsion. "Be a doctor, save a life, but then go out there and find the piece of myself I never had in the first place." He paused. "And I did, believe it or not. I learned how to shoot, got shot, and lived, really lived for the first time in my life. It was horrible...but it was magnificent."
"How so?"
"Because when you're fighting for your life, the lives of the men next to you - it's strange, but your nerves are on fire, you hear better, you see clearer. It's a rush and all you want to do is just run and never stop. Not because you're afraid, but because in that moment, you could and there's nothing stopping you."
This was the most alive, most passionate she had ever heard him. He was alive - enjoying it! A spark she had never seen flickered in his warm kaleidoscopic eyes, blue and green and hazel and quintessentially John.
"It's amazing, everything you do there. You don't make friends, you meet your brothers. You're unstoppable and the world bows down to you! And then...and then you get shot, or someone dies and you realize just how small you really are...it humbles you. Shows you the real world.
"You leave the army, you leave the feel of sand stinging in your eyes every damn time there was wind, you leave the smell of blood and fire, you get a decent shower, decent food, and a warm bed. You have all the time in the world to forget the death, the violence. And at the end of the day you have absolutely nothing worth having. Isn't that funny?" he sneered, face twisted in a grimace. "Isn't that just bloody hilarious?"
No. It wasn't. Not to her. Not to him either.
"Then there are those people lucky enough to have a purpose after it's all said and done. Someone or something gives them something to hold onto, something to make up for the lack of the real world. For a while, everything's great! Maybe being a civilian isn't so bad. Your senses are a bit duller, you don't think or move as well as you used to...but this is the life people expect you to have and it's not as bad as you'd think it would be. You go with it, be grateful you weren't fatally wounded. Or at least not be completely jealous of the boys you buried there that were."
Everything he was speaking of so matter-of-factly was a new world to Ella. A world where killing gave you a thrill? Where life wasn't whatever the YOLO fad was, it was literally 'Live or die'? It was strange to hear, how war could give people sense of belonging. She had to listen, though, she needed to comprehend what no one ever talked about for fear of getting too close, falling too deep. It was an insatiable urge to learn - and even if she would've had something to say, she would have let it go. This was more important.
The look in his eyes grew more hazy, more distant., reminiscing about the ghosts of his fallen comrades. He knew he wasn't being coherent, coherency wasn't essential, but he had to try to make her understand, truly know what it was like to lose.
"And then it hits you. This version of the 'real world', the convenient half-truth that so many people just take for granted, where there's no bombs or guns, but where innocent lives are ruined just the same and you lose everything you had just found, again. You don't know what to do and you're bloody lost because all you know is the chasm between life and death.
"You fake it in the hope that you'll make it. All of it. Smiles, forgiveness. It's all handed out so freely, but none of it's real. They know that as well as you do and even though they want it they don't press you for it. That makes them weak. Still doesn't make a difference. You do what you know how to do. You blend in and hope eventually that you get a new set of orders to follow. But until then, you survive. You don't live. You survive."
"And what do you do then?" Ella prodded. She had never seen this side to him before, the determined soldier who didn't want pity. She, like the rest of the people who prefer to remain blissfully blind, had only taken for granted their reality, their sanctuary. She was seeing, for once, the man who had lost everything, built himself back up, and lost it all again. He was struggling, but carefully hid the worst from the rest of the world because he didn't want their shallow condolences. She had never seen anything like it.
John snorted. He was completely bemused by the question, couldn't see a point in it, because didn't everyone already know what the answer would be? He was tired of fighting, he was sick of remembering. He wasn't fragile, didn't want to be treated like he was either. He had already been broken.
He stood up, shook his head, and reached for the doorknob. "Nothing. Not anymore."
He didn't go back. She didn't expect him to. He was a soldier who knew the one trick to survival: always be on the move. The only problem was that John Watson finally had nowhere else to go.