Author's Note: Everyone that's been reading and enjoying it so far, this note is for you. Romance is a funny thing because regularly it pretends to be something else.
You've been holed up in your own private purgatory for three weeks, whether it be the couch you sleep on or the bar. Staring into your reflection, watching a movie for the 70th time, doing the same shit every day, your brain knows it so well it refuses to process what's going on. Throw a wrench in it, and all that's left is your own yearning for something familiar. Human beings are animalistic enough to like some sort of routine, but at the same time we crave originality, we crave something different. The same repeated motions give way to apathy. Pain, cold, it all just turns into a spike your brain sends to your body. Talking with other people turns into the same thing every time, a hashing out of the same old tired arguments. Old people talk about the weather so much because it's the only variable left in their lives.
Did the perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?
You're bent over a warming drink at the bar, your breath heating up the glass and fogging it a little. You're moving your jaw back and forth, front and back. You want to start a fight, you want to get laid, you want the sweet rush of chemicals pumping through you. Yin went to China to try to get away from it, from the boringness of real life between missions. He was back 2 weeks after the Sang mission. It's the same everywhere. You lean back in your chair and squint up at the nightly news. Nothing interesting, as usual, some red headed celebrity getting dragged back into rehab. You can't figure out what's so fashionable about luke warm showers and sitting in a circle with a bunch of other rejects, but for some reason young Hollywood seems to find the entire process endearing.
Barney... you wonder if he's gotten his face pumped up with what's for all intents and purposes, a toxin. Whoever is doing his less intrusive plastic surgeries, they're a hack. You're pretty sure you could mix up something twice as good as commercially available botox at half the price. When's the last time he's gotten something injected? Six months ago? Eight? You can always tell because his face looks more frozen than usual.
When you're constantly thinking about your boss and his plastic surgery ventures, take a drink. Cram some Excedrin in your mouth while you're at it. Hell, you're not even sure if you see one female over at the Old Point Bar tonight, and that's both depressing and a solid reflection on the clientele. It can only take a moment to waste the rest of your life.
After a while, after the midpoint of your life, there's nothing good on the horizon. The only thing you have to look forward to is growing old and infirm and dying smeared in your own shit in some care facility. That's why you're all still going, Benedict Arnold, as he died in his bed, he begged to die in battle, he wanted to. In the end, one or all of you are going to get snuffed by some lucky shit with a gun, and that's better. Maybe not Hale, with his wife, or Toll Road, maybe not Lee Christmas with his little Lacy, not even Yin. You, Barney, Trench, hell, even Booker, you're in it to the end and it's sour. Sure, you like to pretend that you're better than everyone else because you don't NEED this, but the fact of the matter is, that it's your only way out. Because 10 years ago was when the future turned from being a promise to a threat. 10 years ago was when The Expendables got on top and fucking stayed there. It's only a matter of time until more and more of you stop being able to function and new teams take the cake.
At some point, the memories, your adventures, they'll be the only thing you have left.
The trick to immortality is creating a legacy. Yours just happens to be draped in blood. It won't be something you hear about on the national news, it won't be something you hear about on the radio. It'll be hushed and quiet from team to team. You like to pretend that you're okay with that fate, everyone getting whittled around until only Ross remains and you're all his backup singers, really though, you're not. It's better than dropping dead in some residential care unit, is it?
If we're remembered more for what we destroy instead of what we create, what will you have turned into in 30 years, when you're long gone? The crazy guy who sold out his team? The chemically imbalanced drug addict? If that's all you'll be in the eyes of history, why stop using at all? They're all questions you don't have an answer to, all questions that ride on something that hasn't even happened yet.
You'll never be as young as you are tonight, and you're here pissing it away in some shitty biker bar. It's always smelled like moldy peanuts and motor oil in this joint. You throw a crumpled up 20 dollar bill in your glass and leave. It's December, but it's also Louisiana, it's warm.
Your entire team, who will they be after they die? Barney will probably grow about 5 inches, his face won't be distorted by plastic surgery. His tattoos won't be as ugly, he'll be a competent leader. He'll turn into a white knight, a protector of women, famous for when he gave his earnings to some little brown chick on an island the world at large don't care about. He'll be the one who valued his own work over women, turning away Maggie (who of course will have nerves of steel) for his own Road's ears will become more and more ridiculous with each telling, everyone will know he was so in love with his pain that he was unable to leave it behind. He won't be the bookish little shit he is. Hale will turn into a big black giant, no one will know about the little razor he kept in his pocket, his quiet jokes, his sense of humor. Yin will get smaller and smaller, to the point where he doesn't use guns any more, faster and faster, more and more unable to speak English. His shortfalls will become points of interest. Lee Christmas will become so British it hurts, so pumped up and ready for action, so focused on his girlfriend that it'll become a funny joke.
You? Well, you'll be the biggest fuck up of them all. You can see yourself, sickly skin, greasy, dirty, huge in stature, crazy. It's not too far off from where you are now. You can't make what's already a caricature any more ridiculous without sacrificing the foundation.
It's so easy to laugh at yourself, laugh at others, when they're nice and far away.
Reality means you live until you die. No one wants that, no one wants to tell stories of a bunch of mostly normal guys. They want to hear about a bunch of insane old men firing guns at speeds unheard of, doing missions and never getting shot, never getting hurt. They want to remove the human component from the people, turn them into gods of the gun. Deities of Death.
You're not stupid, Gunnar. Sure, maybe everyone wants you to be because it fits, big stupid guy who happens to be educated. You're more aware than they think, you know what awaits their images down the road. What awaits them, the people? Probably some sort of May, December romance, shaking up with some girl and dying a few years later, leaving her a fuck ton of money to piss away.
More and more it feels like you're doing a bad impersonation of yourself.
Right now, you want to get laid. You want to lay on your back and let her do all the damn work. It's easy to make up these pretend thoughts to soothe yourself so you don't have to face the real problem head on. Every time you snag yourself a little woman, you tell yourself you love them but really you're both using each other. She's using you for your bank account and cheating on you while you're on missions, you're using her for the intimacy you crave. Then, when she drops you, it's like coming down from a high, both the best feeling and the worst feeling rolled into one. You're yanked out of your personal coma and slammed into the wall of reality. For every mission, there's a scar, for every relationship, nothing's learned because nothing lasts. The dents in your bank account are filled, the space next to you in bed cold to the touch. There's nothing permanent.
You can feel the wind whipping through the hair you don't dye as you're driving back to your apartment. Going back to your dirty hovel is like dumpster diving. There's so many new bits of trash and garbage that show up out of nowhere, sometimes you wonder if you have an extremely reclusive roommate. There's a joke in there somewhere, you tuck it away into that corner of your mind you reserve for the puerile shit you drag out for the rest of them.
You find a letter, it almost looks like a bill in how it's packaged. There's a little clump at the bottom of it, a little sandy feeling thing. You know what it is before you're even done dragging the knife through the top of the envelope.
Assisted suicide, without dying dying.
Enjoy is all the little note says. It's typed in New Times Roman, looks like size 11 or 12 to you, you're no computer expert. In the bag that's barely big enough to fit a quarter in, there's a bit of grainy yellowish powder, like little rocks. You don't feel it yet, but there's sweat coming down your face. Your mouth is watering, your nose is running, every part of you wants to get out a marker, get out a pen, you want to smoke it so bad. Your hand is shaking a little bit and in an instant, you hurl the baggie across your apartment with all the force you can muster. The exclamation point was either condescending or forceful.
You're barely thinking when you slam the door to your apartment, grabbing the keys to an Audi you've driven all of twice.
It could be Trench, the competitor with a chip on his shoulder. It could be Church, the dispatcher with a hair across his ass about the mess that was Vilena. It could be some new anti-villian, here to try and bring the team down. You knock on Barney's door with the side of your fist. The time is 12:18 P.M. You don't realize that your mother died 6 years ago today.
Barney opens the door. White tee shirt, tacky necklace, jeans. Either he just got back from the bar or he's planning on going, you can't tell.
"Someone sent me a gram of meth." No use trying to pretend to be the suave heroin addict you aren't. Barney's eyes widen as much as his ruined face will let them.
"So you are using again." it's an observation, not a question. An assumption. A lie.
"No. I just got home and it was on my table." You're talking to him like you watch parents talk to their retarded children.
"Well who sent it?" Barney says, standing aside, letting you into his house.
"I don't know. Someone who wants to see us get fucked up. Probably someone who knows about Vilena." The name of the shitty island makes you recoil with your past actions.
"Gunnar, I think you're jumping to conclusions." A tired Barney says. He's back from the bar, you know that now. You suddenly feel very, very stupid. A little care package gets sent to you and you go running to your boss, the man who will probably never fully trust you again. You should have went to Yin, because at this point, maybe you deserve to get headbutted in the nuts by the little guy.
You realize that you're alone with Barney Ross and you suddenly feel very, very awkward.
"I'm getting a hotel. If I go back there I'm gonna end up smoking it."
"You do that."
You're out the door.
If you look up pathetic in the dictionary, there's a picture of Gunnar Jensen standing outside Barney Ross's house, a frown showing more in his eyes than if ever would in his face. What, had you expected to come over and play Scooby Doo, who planted the crank on your kitchen table?
The lady at the Best Western's front desk, she ran out of perkiness about 4 hours into her twelve hour shift. You're given a phone, an ice bucket, a can of Raid, and you're alone in that room again. That's how things end, you alone in some shitty room doing nothing, alone with your own thoughts.
The realization that everyone you love will either reject you or die dawns slowly.
You're taking all the little bottles of liquor out of the minibar and draining them one by one. It's sad, you sitting here and watching some Sitcom about a family who lives in Ohio or something. You don't really know why you feel so down, why you feel so damn broken, except you do. You won't admit it, you won't pick up the phone and call one of your six friends, there's nothing you're going to be able to do about it until the next mission roles around, the next job. You only hope it's somewhere warm. You can spend your whole life building a wall between you and anything real.
You've failed at being you.