So Many Things ….
By Suisan
04 AUG 07
So many things have gone wrong in my life.
Mom left, Dad pushed me (and Steven) too hard, Sally tried to mother us but she had family of her own to tend to. Bud died, practically right before my eyes, even though no one would believe me - not after Dad convinced me that I couldn't have seen what I saw and I began to accept that as gospel, pushing my 'gifts' down and away from who I wanted to be. For Dad's sake, not mine; I never really had a choice.
Until I screwed up my grades just enough to lose the scholarship I didn't need, or want, and ended up not going to college based on my football skills. Oh, I went to college, but after tuition costs - which is all Dad would pay - I had to work my tail off at two part-time jobs to earn enough money for books and rent. Though, looking back on my college experiences, my having to work my way through school was a blessing in disguise. I learned self-reliance, how to take care of myself and others - since I had roommates who couldn't be trusted near a stove or a washing machine - and gave me a taste of what it meant to be a 'leader among men.' Well, off the gridiron anyway. Yes, I managed to still play on the football team, but only as a walk-on second stringer. I just didn't have time to attend every single practice, work and carry a full twelve to sixteen credit hour load and complete my schoolwork on time.
Then one of my roommates got interested in military service and dragged me along on his trip to the recruiting office. The Army for gawdsake! Not my first choice, if I were to choose military service - which I wasn't interested in at all, no thank you - I would choose the Navy, or maybe the Air Force … hell, even the freaking Marines over the Army. At least the Marines had really sharp looking uniforms. Robert went Army Reserve, something about not wanting to commit full time and only (really) wanting money for college. He went to boot camp that summer and came back in time for the Fall Semester and immediately joined the ROTC unit on campus. After two weeks of listening to non-stop chatter about how "great" the Army was and how he didn't have to work two or three jobs that school year just to make ends meet … I decided that I could at least talk to the ROTC commander.
Three years later, with my degree in military history in one hand (with a minor in Western Civilization), I raised my right hand and swore myself into full time active duty status as a Army officer. Much to my father's disgust and my secret delight. Anything to piss off the old man who, finally, had done what he'd threatened to do when I declared my major as something other than business or law related - he disowned me. Literally. Cut me out of his will and his life and worked damn hard on making sure Steven treated me the same damn way.
Screw them. I had a new family now, one who all wore the same uniform, all who swore to protect the country, their unit, and their buddy next to them. And we trained hard. Harder than I ever trained for anything before, but Rangers are like that. We're tough, lean and mean … and take on missions no other division could or would take on. We're the elite.
We were set up. Shot down. Left for dead.
I wanted to die, but Inchaca wouldn't let me. That stubborn old man refused to let me give up and practically forced me to recover from the wounds left behind by an exploding helicopter and from my ignoring the wounds long enough to bury my teammates. My brothers. My family.
Even before I learned the language of the Quecha, even before the wounds healed enough to allow me to even walk without assistance, the 'curse of my childhood' came back. The jungle of Peru is no place to have your senses go haywire. Everything is too bright, too loud, too prickly or enticing, too odiferous and just too damn tempting to taste. Inchaca seemed to expect what had happened to me, like he'd planned for it, and for the next three weeks, we lived alone - away from the tribe - as he helped me learn to control the senses and use them to help my temporary family.
Temporary.
I didn't want to go home, back to the Army and the United States. I didn't have to. The Army probably thought me dead with the rest of my team and my father wouldn't mourn my loss. However, Inchaca wouldn't hear me talk of NOT going home to the 'Big Falling Waters' - his name for Cascade, Washington, where I grew up and still, in spite of everything, considered my home - after all, according to some shamanistic vision he'd had, I wouldn't be complete as a Tribal Protector until I returned to Big Falling Waters and located the Young Wolf One. Yeah, right.
The Army came. A grave detail unit I found out later, not the 'relief unit' I had halfway expected them to be. After a large amount of confusion, my identity confirmed, the Army took me from my temporary family and returned me to my second family … only to stab me in the back and, for the sake of keeping everything hushed, kicked me to the curb.
Discharged.
Well, the records would say I resigned my commission, but I was pretty much given a "medical" and told to go home, to Cascade, find someone to talk to and just relax for 6 months to a year before doing anything else. Screw that!
I joined the police force, another life choice made primarily to piss off the old man … and it worked! After what the US Army had put me through, after what I'd survived in the Peruvian jungles, nothing the Cascade Police Academy threw at me fazed me. And, after only a year on the beat, I took - and passed - the detective's examine and started working in the crème de la crème of the detective units. Major Crime.
My newest family.
Or it could've been. Jack tried, even Carolyn tried, but even though Caro and I married, we never really became a family and as much as I tried to loosen up and become more a part of the team, I couldn't. Stints where I was 'loaned out' to Vice didn't help either. Those jerkoffs wouldn't know honor and duty and covering each other's backs if someone walked up and smacked them upside the heads with the concepts.
Mad bomber on the loose.
My scenes going haywire again, not being able to control them, wondering if I'd finally lost my mind, making an appointment with the department's favorite doctor. Meeting a hippy-throwback-wild-child-whirlwind-of-color. Almost getting smashed flat by a trash truck. Almost getting blown up in the kid's apartment due to a methlab explosion next door. Surviving the kid's 'experimental' ape-chimp-destruction-clad-in-fur, Larry. Listening to Sandburg, learning to control, once more, these senses of mine and learning a new term for what I am.
Sentinel.
So many things have gone right in my life…
END