I want to put out a big THANK YOU to everyone for reviewing/favouriting/following this after just the first chapter. I love every single one of you beautiful humans.
Disclaimer: This chapter deals with some PTSD and although I have explored the topic fairly decently, I am in no way claiming extensive knowledge on the subject. That being said, I hope it's fairly realistic. Also, I own nothing.
'A for Afghanistan'
The red dust fills his lungs, suffocating him from the inside out. He splutters in the raging heat, rubbing his clouded vision.
He's back there; the wasteland of Afghanistan.
The gravelly rocks crunch under his feet and he can't regain his breath. He's afraid.
Jay looks down, expecting to see his combat uniform. With only a t-shirt and jeans as protection, he feels bare. He's afraid still.
A blazing wind lifts his hair, whirling more of the dust into his eyes. The stinging ensues. He swallows and winces at the scathing pain at the back of his throat. He needs to get out, but the dunes stretch for miles. He's alone. And afraid.
"Hey, Jay! Go long!" The innocent voice calls, so happy and light it's almost carried away. Jay turns around immediately, following the sound.
And there he is; Ben Corson. Eight years old, slouching in baggy jeans and a plain blue shirt. The shirt is as bright as his eyes. His signature baseball cap sits backwards on his head, a few strands of hair ruffled by the fluctuating wind. He tosses the baseball between his small hands, his grin widening.
Jay feels himself stumble.
"Ben?" He asks, not daring to believe it.
The young boy kicks the ground, digging the toes of his sneakers into the gravel. He's still smiling, the ball slipping between his fingertips as he continues to throw it up and down.
Halstead steps forward, his eyes wide as he takes in the sight.
"I can't believe-" He starts, almost smiling, before interrupted by another voice that sends chills down his spine.
"Honey, dinner's ready!"
He whips round immediately, feeling his face go lax. His jaw drops and everything stops for a second. The wind dies out and the pain in his throat subsides. The heat eases and the sun stops straining. All for a second.
"Mom?"
His lips barely move. His eyelids are fluttering and he can feel the tears brimming. She's there, close enough for him to run and embrace. She's there in her apron, her hair curled and her smile soft. She's there like she was when he was ten. She's fresh faced and bright. She's home.
Everything feels real. When the wind decides to pick up, he can smell her perfume. It's soothing. It's the smell he sought out; sitting in her closet for hours as a boy, anything left inside of himself breaking when he could no longer pick up the scent. But it's back.
His hopeful eyes want to cry. And she smiles like she knows.
And then it tears through him. Well, the bullet actually tears through his mother. But Jay feels it all the same.
He doesn't hear the gunshot and he doesn't see the bullet. He just sees her crumple to the burning ground with blood seeping from her abdomen.
He screams. An animal's cry of dispair. He runs to her.
Blood. So much blood.
He's holding her on the ground. And he's sweating and crying.
"Mom," He's crying in the red hot sun. "Mom, please." The blood pours like a stream, trailing past the two of them into nothingness.
His hands, bigger than they were at ten, lace with the warm red liquid. His tears are coming fast now. He's still screaming. He's screaming and crying and sweating in the painful heat.
"Stay with me, Mom."
He can't stop the bleeding.
"Jay?"
He can barely see through the tears, but he turns just the same. He turns to the voice of a scared boy.
Ben clutches his neck. Jay can't see the rope, but he can see the marks. Red, deep, cutting through skin. Strangulation.
Ben falls, spluttering for breath.
"Jay?" He cries out in agony, writhing on the floor as the marks deepen.
Jay's shaking. Blood still pours onto him, and he looks down into the wounded eyes of his mother, still hanging on. His laboured breath becomes erratic and he looks at her, pleading. Almost begging. He needs to go.
"Jay!" Ben cries again, this one masked by tears and pain.
Jay lays his mother down, and with what feels like a final breath, he draws his hands from her wound.
He's crying, breathing, aching, sweating, pleading.
He runs to Ben and throws his body onto the ground alongside the dying boy. His bloody hands seek out his neck, but can't feel the rope.
Ben splutters and screams in agony. His face drains of colour.
"No, no, no, no," Jay chants in a traumatised scream. "No!"
Ben goes limp, his face contorted in inexplicable torment.
"Halstead!" A voice yells. He recognises it immediately as Erin's.
He's sweating so much now. He's in pain. He feels as though he's going to pass out. Hold on. Hold on.
He looks up, loses his breath all over again.
She's standing with her hands locked behind her back, nothing but the sand dunes as a backdrop to her look of fear. She's quivering. She's close to crying. She's terrified. There's a vulnerability in her face that breaks anything left in him.
"Jay, help-"
She doesn't finish her sentence. The skin of her neck breaks in a wide laceration. Blood seeps out instantly.
He's running on the terrain again, but the rough sand trips him in his stride and he's on the ground, scrambling to his feet despite the pain in his body.
He's never felt so much fear. His body hurts. His head hurts. He looks back at Ben, in the midst of death. He looks forward to his partner, fallen to her knees, tears mixing with the blood as it trails down her body. He looks to his mother, slowly but surely, having her life stolen away.
He's on his feet again, everything inside of him aching.
He catches Lindsay before she falls completely into the blistering terrain. There's blood everywhere.
Screams fill his ears. Everyone screams. They all beg for his help.
He's sweating. He's helpless.
He looks down at Erin and her body shakes.
He looks up, and the backdrop is laced with the dead. Bodies of Afghan children crumple everywhere. The screams become deafening. He sees old platoon members, bawling as they teeter on the edge of living.
Johnson begs for help, the voice so real it's haunting. Ricardo is crying for someone to relieve the pain. Blake's body begins to disintegrate before his eyes. Stone is screaming.
They're all howling his name. They need help. He's their last hope. They scream his name as though their lives depend on it. And they do.
"Jay!" Erin yelled. She was holding his body, attempting to calm him into a stillness. As his body thrashed against the bed, he screamed in affliction. It was a cry so unsettling Lindsay felt her blood run cold.
And it all came from nowhere.
One minute, Erin was drifting through her sleep, the next a blood curdling scream stopped her heart.
"Jay! Wake up!" She shook his body, calling his name. "Jay!"
All at once, his thrashing subsided and so did his screams. Halstead's body continued to shake as his tear-soaked eyes opened with shock.
"It's okay, you're okay," Erin assured him, her hands still holding his shoulders. He struggled to regain his breath. "Just look right at me, okay. You're fine. It was a just a nightmare. It wasn't real, it was just a nightmare."
As she said the words with the utmost confidence, Erin couldn't help but question herself. The way he was crying out, the way his body shook... It felt like a lot more than 'just a nightmare'.
"You're okay." She repeated, for what felt like an infinite time. "I'll get you some water."
Her fingertips lingered on his shoulder until he nodded, still spluttering for air.
She grabbed a sweater from the side of his bed as she exited the room with haste, tugging it on her form as she told herself to calm down. She couldn't freak out. Whatever it was that Jay was going through, it required a level-headed Lindsay. She filled the glass with speed, swallowing hard when she felt even her own hand shaking slightly. When the returned to his room, his head was in his hands, his breathing so heavy she could hear it from the doorway.
She sank back onto the comfort of his bed, handing him the glass. She sat close by as he drank the water in almost one gulp, his adam's apple bobbing as though he hadn't drank in days. Lindsay watched intently as he swallowed, realising she'd never seen him so vulnerable.
There was still a visible shake to his stature, and his body looked overwhelmingly fatigued. She saw a sheen of sweat lace his body. And even through the silence, a quiet so haunting, all Erin could hear was the echoing of his wounded cries.
She'd never done this before; sure, clearing up after her mom was a regular thing, but it was never like this. She never felt her heart break looking at her half-unconscious mother. She never got the urge to pull her close and and hold her through the night, pushing away the demons. She never felt this much anguish.
Almost instinctively, she reached out a hand to the back of his neck. Her fingers hovered over the skin when she registered her movements, wondering whether or not it was overstepping. Fighting against doubt, her cold fingertips stroked the nape of his neck as his breathing softly slowed.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" Erin finally asked tentatively.
Jay shook his head almost immediately. "Not really." She could hear the echoing of her own words from earlier that night.
"It could help..." She went on to suggest.
"No."
So she nodded, her eyes on him as he slowly let his body succum to the tire. His breathing was still fairly heavy, but not nearly as strained as it was before.
After a few moments, the two of them fighting through the night, Jay ran his fingers through his hair again and gripped it at the root. And then he looked to Erin with heartbroken eyes. She could see the shame and embarrassment in them, and in that moment, wanted to fix everything for him.
His eyes then drifted to the skin of her neck. There was only a minuscule scar that remained from the incident at the hospital, a mark of a psycho holding a knife against her in desperation. His hand reached out, thumbing the injury. His hand extended round the rest of her neck and their foreheads fell against one another.
Erin had a million questions, all of them that she desperately wanted an answer for. But he was still breaking, and now wasn't the time.
All at once, he kissed her. It was soft and smooth against her lips, taking her by surprise. When he pulled back after half a second, she caught his eyes.
"Jay..."
He kissed her again, more pressure. He tasted phenomenal, and her body yearned for him. But then she heard his screams echo in the crevice of her brain and pulled back.
"We don't have to..."
She didn't want to have sex to put off talking. She wanted it both, sex and talking. To help him fight through the pain. But she knew Jay, and being closed off was sort of his thing.
So if kissing him was the only way she could console him, she was sure as hell ready to do it. When he leaned in again, she met him halfway and nudged her lips against his. He pulled her on top of him and gripped her hips.
And although the touch of his lips seemed to fix her world, she couldn't help wondering whether or not his was crumbling around her.
I'VE BEEN WANTING TO WRITE JAY'S PTSD FOR 20 YEARS! [okay exaggeration but basically a seriously long time]
It's something I really want the writers to explore, so my dream situation in the show would be something like this for the beginning of Wednesday's episode. Obviously we're not that lucky, so I hope this chapter was an adequate consolation.
Thank you for taking the time to read! I'd really appreciate your thoughts. You all rock.
Coming up: 'B for Breakfast'
