Everything feels like a battlefield and nothing makes sense. The guns, the ground, the air, they're all going pound, pound, pound, and it's making it hard to think, hard to breathe. I just want to come up for air. I'm drowning, I'm drowning, help, help! Help the bombardier, help the bomba—
Then the world cuts out, snaps to black like someone jerked the plug out. Maybe I'm dead. Maybe? I don't—can't think, can't see. But I can breathe. That's all I wanted, was to breathe.
So dark. So dark...
Lights come on after a year. Or a minute. There's no such thing as time, just the darkness and then not. I wake up in an old wooden-and-concrete building, some ticked off old guy standing in front of me. I'm leaning on the smooth linoleum counter and it's great, it really is. I can feel the air starting to get thick again and I fight.
"We aren't looking for help," the old guy growls, mouth cutting a deeper, darker scowl in his withered face. Mountains and valleys all over it, telling a million stories that he can't remember and won't share. My eyes start to trace over them, slowly, but he clears his throat and his eyes flick to beneath the counter for a second. Long enough to notice, not long enough to say anything. Clever.
"You aren't?"
"No. Not from your kind."
My—?
"I know life's hard, but that's no reason to go around and get fucked up on any chem you can find."
"I'm not—? Fucked up on what?"
"C'mon, honey. Doesn't take a doctor to see when someone's coming down from a high."
He starts getting blurry, so I squint my eyes to see him better, turn my head and look a little closer. The mass of brown and blue and gray looks like it moves back, gets a little smaller, reaches under the counter. The air's almost like concrete and I'm drowning again. I'm drowning, I'm drowning, help the—
"I'm not on anything. Swear to God I'm not."
"Yeah right. And I'm secretly rich and the mayor of New Vegas. Now get the fuck out of here before I make you get out."
"But you don't—"
There's the loud metal ch-chick of a pump action shotgun being cocked and suddenly I don't see anything but the weathered end of a gun barrel not three inches from my eyes. It takes a few seconds for the air to thin enough to where I can turn and leave, and even then it doesn't feel fast enough.
Out in the burning desert, air running thin and free through my lungs, I realize that it was for the best that the man had no work. I would've drowned in that room before I ever got paid a cap.
A/N: Another old fic. I...don't really know what to say about it, other than if you're expecting context for it, I don't have any to put it in. It's very much a style piece.
"Help the bombardier" and the (paraphrased) line in the beginning of the fic are from Catch-22.