We were Best Friends

Too Soft, Too Cold

Garlic bread cooked, soup served and crackers broken. We all sit at the table, chairs vacant, but four filled with bodies. I myself may not touch the bread but the loaf is gone by the time the soup is.

It's silent the rest of the day. Tv flicking on, the news drawing on, fights, murders, arrests flash across the screen. No one watches when a 'a year ago today' flashes on and we hear the sounds of the helicarriers falling. Clips of the battles rage on, people and debris falling, people running from the falling ships. Screams of those killed, wounded and hurt, grate on my ears as well as my companions.

The channel is changed, a drama replaces the sounds of deaths and the noises of metal bending and groaning. Fake laughs sound from the speakers now, a fight with women's perfectly manicured nails scratching at each other. No one pays much attention all of us staring off into our own worlds as the one outside gets dark.

My mind bounces between deployments, and what changed at home between and during them. Parents dead. Friends gone. House bought. New friends made. Therapy started. Meeting Sam. New deployment. Losing hearing. Stuck in a hospital. Making friends with Rhodes. Suiting up and scaring Pepper. So much has happened and yet it feels like I'm just here. Not really alive but not quite numb. The knowledge of the fact that I should be dead weighs heavily on my chest, putting more and more pressure on it until I can no longer breathe.

Sam is the first to react. The quick and short gasps leaving my mouth make his head spin the moment he hears it. He pulls me onto the floor talking loud but not loud enough for me to hear. Letting me coil and then lay flat. Buchanan would be in my line of sight but he's not what I'm seeing. The flashing of rounds being fired at night, bombs exploding and the dead eyes of those who have left me flash behind shut eyes. It's literal hell.

One cold hand and one warm grab wrists as the hands attached start clawing at skin peeling skin, making new scars and ripping open the old ones created the same way. Restrained but scared, the words I'M SORRY can be heard both in my head and through my ears. My own voice screams it in my first deployment holding a friend that died and I could not save. Words are screamed, orders are yelled from missions long since passed, orders I gave and orders that killed. Orders that have been over thought and regretted since they were the cause of death of many good soldiers.

Eyes peeling open to grasp at anything to calm myself down bright blue eyes stare back at them blurred through tears. A mask is over my nose and mouth, rich Oxygen is forced to my lungs with each shattered breath. Words Sam has repeated millions of times to me surface. Breathe, you can do this, deep breath in you mouth and out your nose.

Numb. Scared. Panicked and bleeding. All words fit the description of the girl on  the floor, being held by one and being bandaged by another. No words spoken other than to remind them to breathe in and out, deep and even. No small breaths it will scare you into hyperventilating. There's a warm cloth dabbing new scratches from nails on flesh. A cold metal arm wrapped around shoulders. Cold and warm grounding her to one reality. Not letting her slip to the past.

Mask still covering her face, no one hears the knock on the front door not until someone barges in yelling and sets her off again. Screaming and crying, snot running and nails clawing at anything they can, but ripping off while trying to claw the arm that moves from her shoulders to over one and under the other.  Holding (Y/N)'s back to Buchanan's front.

Rhodes has no idea what happened before he came in, but when he raised his voice a person he called a friend screamed in terror and pain. Sam and Buchanan surround her holding her so she can't hurt herself. Buchanan is unconcerned about the jagged nails ripping into his flesh. At the sound of choking and coughing, the air tank is ripped away, mask pulled from her face and a garbage can thrust towards her instead.