Summary: In the wake of the events of 'Dirty Loyal', Gillian remembers a former patient. 'There are some patients that she can't forget: children's voices fingerpainted in the air, soldiers' agonies bootprinted over her brain.'
A/N: Written for #LietoMeLives. A bit late, sorry! This was inspired by the song 'Deserter' by Lonely the Brave.
Rating: T for strong language and war imagery.
There are some patients that she can't forget: children's voices fingerpainted in the air, soldiers' agonies bootprinted over her brain.
Eight years ago, she had counselled a veteran who had become a shell of a man. His trembling fingers had struggled with the golden buttons on his green dress uniform, the medal ribbons a neat row that was such a contrast to his shaking frame.
He'd told her about sand, sun, grit, blood, pain, courage and terror. All the while, his pupils were like blank bullet cartridges and the tremors in his spine were tracer fire. On their third session, with the low winter sun cutting through the blinds in her office, Bryan had recounted the harrowing incident that had led his best friend, Laurence, a twenty-year-old from Mississippi, to flee the battlefield in a dry haze of dust and become a shimmering mirage in the desert. The young man whom they called Elvis because of his intense eyes and honeyed singing voice forever lost to a place where he had no ally, no escape, no language, nothing. A vibrant person who would rather have nothing than possess the totality of war that had been a blitz on his consciousness and a firestorm of fear.
After recounting the desperate ache, that barely describable place of just not knowing, Bryan took a shuddering sip from his glass of water and looked at her, fixing his gaze intently on hers and uttering out the clearest words he'd managed in years.
"They can still kill deserters, right?"
Her scant nod was something of a grenade in the room, a shrapnel-laden burst of an affirmation.
"It's very, very rare, though." It probably hadn't happened since World War II and her voice told him as much: all soothing softness and reassurance. In spite of the balm she could hear in the consonants tripping from her tongue like a little lullaby, the soldier's hand still quaked as he reached for his water once again.
Bryan went on to describe how nothing felt quite the same after that moment. "It was like I was searching for him everywhere. I couldn't think of anything else. You know that moment when you can hear the bubbles against the side of the Coke can? Even with a brand-new can, I couldn't hear the fizz any more."
His life had lost its effervescence and colour without someone who meant so much to him.
The young man's despair had fought its way to the front of her skull while she reeled from the latest barb thrown her way by her best friend. Except now it was more like barbed wire – a thick, dark, cord threaded with a multitude of twisted, razor-sharp edges. A necklace of thorns that would scratch at her skin and threaten to break her until she bled.
Strangely, during the ultra-bright morning after the betrayal-ridden night before, Gillian did not feel as if anything was out of place.
The Saturday morning sunshine (oh, how she'd felt so fucking thankful for the luxury of two whole days away from the fire-scorched earth of a battleground that the office had become) was as all-conquering as ever. The postman still brought the bills and junk mail with a cheerful smile. Her long walk by the canal still sent the twin scents of flowers and diesel knotting in her nostrils.
Although the outside world seemed to rotate away in blissful obliviousness to the latest reshaping of her relationship, she knew exactly what last night's behaviour had done.
It was something corrosive: an acid that had stripped away one of the many layers of feeling she had. It had burned until there was nothing left, and she hadn't had the strength to fight it. She couldn't find the alkaline to balance everything out, to make it neutral. Worst of all, she knew that she couldn't rebuild it. It was gone.
By Sunday, with that same sun willing her from the safe softness of bed, everything external remained nonchalant to her pain. Morning coffee was still bittersweet on her tongue; croissants still buttery and blissfully broken under her fingertips; the thin sheets of the sports pages of the Washington Post still inked with victory and defeat.
The mottled sunset, dappled with bronze and gold – colours of triumph and notoriety – bled its metallic ending all over the evening, shimmering in spite of her darkness and fighting against the night that she desperately wanted to accompany her misery.
Monday, however, brought clarity.
Even though she already knew all the reasons and even understood why events had unfolded in the way they did, the one thing she could not ignore now was the pattern. Something that had been sewn into tight-woven tapestry that narrated the same story again and again: there would always be a replacement, a new, exciting entity that relegated her to uselessness or to towing along with another lie. A mantra of worthlessness that she could practically hear in the echo of her footsteps and the beat of her heart.
With the sharp click of the lock and the bone-rattling bang of her front door as she closed it shut, one thought was pin-sharp and perfectly framed in her mind.
Maybe it was time for a desertion of her own.