Based on the song Sound of Silence by Disturbed.
Sleep was hard to come by. He didn't want to shut his eyes. He didn't want to sleep. Because it was in sleep that they came. And he couldn't stop them coming.
The failures. The misses. The souls on his conscience.
Sometimes the Scotch was the only way to sleep. Not too much to rouse suspicion, but enough to knock him out so he could get some sleep, even if it was only a couple of hours. Even if he had a hangover to contend with the next morning.
So what if he did? He deserved it for being so pathetic.
Tonight was set to be another bad one. The souls clamouring for his own started before he'd even considered sleep, ruling that out immediately. Never mind that he was exhausted from the 16-hour rescue he'd just been on, which had followed on from the 4-hour one before. He actually couldn't remember when he had last even attempted to sleep.
Virgil had been eyeing him all rescue, so he couldn't put a foot wrong. Couldn't have the medic surge all over him. He needed to be out, to be doing, or everything would collapse inside him. So he straightened his spine, flashed his smile and put on a show.
He was getting very good at it. Too good.
Waiting for everyone to retire before pulling out his personal stash, he poured a good slug and knocked it back. And another. And another. One more just for luck. The familiar buzzing soon gave way to the lightheadedness, and he changed for bed, nursing the last glass. Three-quarters of the bottle gone. It was taking more and more to get the needed result.
He fell into a dreamless sleep. It didn't stay dreamless for long.
There was a cobbled street. It was dark, and the street lamps were widely spaced, making pools of yellowish light among the blackness. He was wearing a jacket of some sort, and he stopped under a street light to turn the collar up against the cold and damp that he could feel seeping into his bones. He carried on walking, in and out of the spots of light, getting wetter and colder, when suddenly a bright neon sign caught his eye, and a building loomed out of the dark. It was turning the corner by the building that he first noticed it.
Absolute silence.
It was raining, but there was no sound. He was cold, but there was no wind. He shivered.
The other side of the building was where his nightmare really began. For there was blinding light here. And in the light were people. Hundreds. Possibly even thousands. All the people he could not save. All the people whose lives he had condemned to death. All the people he had killed. They stared at him, mouths moving but no sound coming out.
He had to walk through them, and they clawed at his clothing, grabbed for him to drag him under. He began to run, but there were too many, and the hands dragged him down until he was pinned. He was lying on the cobbles, in the rain, arms and legs held splayed.
Even his screams were silent.
'I warned you.' He closed his eyes. And this was the worst part. 'I warned you this would happen. Yet you brushed it off. You were cocky. "I can handle it," you said.' The owner of the only voice was getting nearer. 'You lied. You lied to me. You lied to your brothers. You lie to yourself.'
He could no longer tell if it was the rain or the tears pouring down his face. But as the speaker got closer, the face came into sharp relief against the thousands of faceless people.
'What are you going to do? When are you going to face the consequences of your actions? When are you going to see the writing on the wall?' He choked on the bile in his throat as it closed around the words he was trying to say. The man bent over him, and suddenly all the others had retreated. Because this was the one man, the one soul that mattered.
'When are you going to tell them you didn't save me?'
He woke up screaming.
Screaming for his Dad.