Warning for some swearing. Also- Tony's a bit OC, mainly because its fun to write. One more after this, will hopefully come sooner (sorry its taken so long)

The Bear

Tony hadn't yet decided if he was actually going to go home. Her words had hurt him, pierced to the core. He hadn't realised that she'd become such a bitch, hadn't seen that in her before. He'd gone to prison for her, given everything so that she could live her stupid little life in peace, and now she was blaming him for not getting a job, for wanting to drink the pain out of his mind.

Who was going to want to employ a traitor? Sure, there had been offers, people who owed Michelle, but he wasn't going to take some charity job, not when he knew that the people around him were going to see him in the same way everyone else did. Everyone but Michelle, or so he thought. She obviously saw him in the same light. That hadn't been something he had considered, that his own wife might condemn him for saving her, but quite clearly she did.

He had been sat here for a while now, not knowing quite where else to go. He couldn't go to a bar, not after what she had said. He wasn't an alcoholic, and he was completely able to cope without a drink, proving this to himself by being here. But still, his head spun and his body called out for it, anything to suppress the memories.

He was everything everyone hated. Not only had he been a "cop" as far as the idiots he shared his cell with were concerned, but he was also a traitor, which meant that everyone had a reason to hate him. Taunts whispered in his ears at night, unimaginable threats that threw shivers through him. Punches dealt in a busy corridor where no one could see, bruises thick on his body, with no one to tell. Who was going to care what happened to him? The jeering if he did complain was worse than dealing with it. Not that it was the pain that got to him, not as much as the threats. To his exhausted body, the threats to those he cared about, those who he had sought to protect, had been far worse than anything he could have imagined. He still dreamt about it, the knife entering her flesh as he stood watching, unable to help. Steven Saunders had given him those nightmares, but prison had made it an obsession.

But he had figured that it would be different when he got out, if he ever did, regardless of Jack's assurances, he didn't actually think it would happen. He'd presumed that his life would be like before, that he'd go to work, come home, sleep, read, breathe, all of it without being watched, hated, condemned. But it hadn't happened. Everywhere he went their eyes drove into his flesh, whispered voices marking him as the traitor. And his own wife had become his jailor. Uncaring, oblivious to him, not reaching to him as a person, merely as a duty she had to fulfil, she watched every move he made, calculating with her eyes, telling him what to do, not trusting him in the slightest.

He couldn't take it anymore, couldn't take her, any of them. He couldn't go back, that life was not what he wanted. He wanted to lay on the couch, drowning in beer cans, watching a crap team get the crap kicked out of them and pretending to care. That was the life he craved for; an easy lay somewhere nearby, not wanting more than a fck, not wanting him to be the person she remembered. He couldn't do that, couldn't be that man, wasn't anything like the person she wanted, the sham she had believed in.

He would go back in the morning, after she had gone to work, get his stuff and leave. He could find somewhere to go, there were always places. Never mind the fact that he was currently sat on a roundabout in a park, spinning himself round absently under a black sky, watching the moon glint off the metal. He would find somewhere.

He had to, he couldn't stay there, couldn't bear it, he would explode, and that would hurt her. He didn't want to hurt her, not anymore than he already had.