A/N: My first foray in SEAL Team. Before I post the long, multi-chapter fic I have planned, I thought I'd post this quick 2nd POV experiment that I scribbled down after tonight's episode. (I promise that the long, multi-chapter fic is written in regular ole' 3rd POV, haha. Like I said, this 2nd POV oneshot is just an experiment/me playing around with language and style). Lemme' know your thoughts and suggestions and ideas and all that fun stuff. luv u babes. [insert heart emoji here]


Your name is Clay Spencer. You're an almost twenty six year old Navy Seal, your favorite band is Def Leppard, and you know abandonment and loss more intimately than you know the depths of your own heart.

It all began with your father, Ash Spencer. He doesn't want you. He never has. You're less than ten years old when Ash decides to throw you away, discard you like trash or an ailing old dog in need of euthanization. When you feel the sharp, cold sting of loss, you're only a child.

Daddy doesn't love you. Daddy is gone.

You gave Ash Spencer all that you could — what little free time you were allotted as a DEVGRU Operator, your hard-earned money when his bills were overdue, your self respect and worth, your hope for a soft epilogue when your time in the teams came to an end: blue eyed babies, white picket fences, Tier One brothers to reminisce with. He laughed at you, told you that your dreams were naive and that you weren't enough.

Nothing is ever enough for Ash Spencer. You made peace with this unfortunate fact of life long before you turned thirteen, long before you even had your first kiss.

Before it was you and Stella Baxter, it was you and Brian Armstrong. You lose him next.

You watch the brown-eyed boy who once kissed the taste of sweet Georgia peaches out of your mouth free-fall from over 30,000 feet and hit the ground at speed — he was dead the second he hit the ground. At first, you don't know that it's Brain. That realization comes approximately seven minutes later, when all the other Navy SEALs are pulling off their helmets … you glanced around, frantic, for Brian. You never find him.

Brian Armstrong is dead, and the best part of you dies with him. You and Master Chief Adam Seaver travel to Brian's hometown to inform his family of his untimely death. As it turns out, Brian had about as much family as you did.

Your name is Clay Spencer, and you try your very hardest to harden your heart. It doesn't work. You're a hero, through and through, and you will fight tooth and nail to save everyone, to reach for every single last outstretched hand. You will save this world from itself or you'll die trying.

Your soul is a lighthouse. The blue of your eyes? A beacon. The love in your heart runneth over, child.

Sometimes, you wish that you could be as heartless as Ash Spencer. It would hurt less.

Master Chief Adam Seaver, the Chief who trained you in Green Team, the man whom you now have the privilege of calling brother, throws himself into the arms of a suicide bomber to save your life. He dies, too. In a blaze of goddamn glory. When all is said and done, you decide that's how you want to die, too — in a blaze of goddamn glory.

(Careful what you wish for, kid.)

The next person to abandon you is Stella. You don't lose her to tragedy, thank God. She's in Virginia Beach, alive and unharmed, living her dreams, finding happiness and forging a home in a man who doesn't kick down doors and cut throats for a living. You find solace in this. Joy. Stella Baxter deserves every good and bright thing that this big, scary world has to offer. (Everything that you can't give her.) You wanted to marry her. You would have, too, if she hadn't left you high and dry.

You're not angry. You don't blame Stella. Not every woman can be Naima Perry.

The last thing that you lose in this life is Bravo Team.

"... five guys around me, one beating heart." That's what you said to Jason Hayes, and you meant it with every breath and beat of your heart. Jason, Sonny, Ray, Trent, and Brock: your brothers, your family, your reason for dragging your sorry ass out of bed every morning. Eric, Lisa, and Mandy were your family too. You loved them just as deeply, just as fiercely. You'd happily give your life for any one of them. All they have to do is ask.

You've never experienced this surplus of love before. Finally, you have a family to call your own.

Your name is Clay Spencer, and you're lying on your back on a dirty, blood-soaked street in the middle of the Philippines, looking dazedly up at the stars. (It's okay.) The pain that you're in steals your breath away. Your skin is burning hot from the heat of the blast—it feels like acid is eating away at your flesh, and something is embedded so deeply in your thigh that you can feel it scraping against one of your bones. Your vision is blurry and dim. You're completely deaf. The acrid smell of blood (your own) and smoke and singed flesh is so overwhelming that it threatens to choke you. (It's still okay.)

It's okay because you saved the lives of six innocent men, women, and children. It's okay because you reunited a frightened little boy with his brother. Eight less families will grieve tonight.

Bravo Team. They're all around you now. Touching you, talking to you—you don't know how to convey that you can't hear them. You can't hear anything. Sonny is the most frantic of them all, stroking your hair and touching your face, barking at Trent Sawyer while Jason flags down an ambulance.

This is where you lose Bravo Team. This is where the hurt in your heart far exceeds the hurt ravaging your mangled body.

Your name is Clay Spencer, and you die in Petty Officer Sonny Quinn's arms.

It's still okay. Your consciousness fights through the haze of agony and fear to be present with your team—just one last time—and though your mouth is full of blood you manage a wobbly little smile, and you die loved and in the many, many arms of your brothers.

Before you can once again hear the sweet hymn of Brian Armstrong's laughter, and before you feel Master Chief Adam Seaver clap you on the shoulder, a final thought passes through your mind:

Hey, I'm finally gonna' get to meet Nate. Maybe he'll help me haunt Sonny.


welp! i was really in the mood to hurt my own feelings tonight. it is currently 2:00 A.M. so ... there are probably a buttload of errors in this (i only proofreaded once) but! yee. also, would anyone be interested in a short sequel? [eyes emoji]