The blood and gore had been difficult to remove. A shower long enough to scrub and scrub and scrub again would have gone long cold in a regular home. And yet, still the scalding heat poured down on my body, the steam condensing into clouds barely piercable by normal eyesight. After the water no longer turned pink, the shower continued to run, as I searched with all my senses to scrub the tile so that no potential taint remained. Brant had promised, in fact he had been absolutely positive. Still, errors could be made even by the most thorough of men.
My body arced with pain. At first I watched the blades cut into my body, but then the dreams hit me, and I raged against the combined strength of Spyder and Titan. Not to get free, but to attack the snakes that ravaged my body. I could feel, taste, scent the blood spurting from my body, feel the tissues reknit themselves to heal that sliced by White Wraith and Rook. I knew I screamed and screamed, in pain and frustration and fear of what was to come, what had come, what might come.
Yet, slowly the pain no longer echoed through my skull, the pain I had felt all morning, dissipating even as my friends and brothers carved my flesh, a touch cooled the fever of my struggle.
Eventually I awoke from the horror, to feel the horrific pain fading, gone in an instant shortly after as Rook’s angelic healing pulsed through my body. So powerful that somehow I could sense that no new scars had been added to all of the tiny white scars that littered my body, remnants of a self-healing that I often wondered why they remained. I also wondered if it was because I deserved the visual reminder of the torn tissues, the wounds, the pain.
When my eyes opened finally in self-awareness, she was kneeling there, my head cradled in her lap, a near image to the time before. Except this time, a gulf existed. A chasm of pain and betrayal that I created. I reached a blood soaked hand up to cradle her pale face, one so beautiful, and I coughed blood, muting, the “I love you,” but stronger for the “I’m so sorry.”
She leaned forward, kissing me, and I responded, kissing her back. Brief, but….tender and amorous at the same time. Then she slapped me hard, and slid my head to the ground before rising into the sun in her powered armour, in my mind, the true angel of the team.
The steam slowly undulated on the air currents as I stepped out of the shower, wrapping the towel around my waste before staring into the mirror obscured by the condensation.
Who would appear to me if I wiped down the mirror? What image would be reflected? A ghost of some fool hearted kid out to save the world while hiding the broken pain within? A wraith of the idiotic soldier who let fresh pain drive him from chasing what he truly wanted? The demon buried inside? The monster? The man? The snake? How could any of the women I loved accept me when I couldn’t accept himself. I feared the answers, I didn’t need therapy to tell me that I was afraid of what I had become, that I hate it. Even more, I feared the damage I could do to those whom I loved the most. And the most important one of all wanted to become more like me, like us.
I stand beside Alliance Two, just inside the hanger. I feel…..lost. Brant landed us, Rook still in Rook form. I feel…..frustration from her, anger maybe, at Henri’s interference in the battle. Brant looks…..confused. Everybody else had not even returned with us, Titan off immediately to see his fiancee, Spyder to patrol, Whitley fulfilling Henri’s promise to make sure Shawna went to Dr. Downs. I know I need to as well, I’ve known for years that Shawna needed to go to therapy, but……while I never argued against it, I had always been very opposed to my own, and the guilt that she took that as an example, well, it weighs heavily on me. I’m so afraid that if I go see him, that it some how validates what we saw in that fucking mind prison. I let them make me believe that I had killed her….killed my baby. It haunts me every minute of every day. Even more, I’m afraid my selfishness at keeping Shawna with me instead of therapy for her own trauma over the years. When I lost her the first time to the clowns, I realized that yes I loved her, but those first months when the team was together, we never talked much, not really, but she just accepted who I was, and I did the same…..and she was my friend. The first person I really called a friend in as long as I remember, at least since the loss of my team. What if I had lost that? So I never pressed her, not for therapy, not for training, not for anything. Because I was selfish, and more afraid of what would happen if she realized what a mistake she was making by being with me, more selfish for what might happen to me than helping her be…..her.
Lost in my own misery, I didn’t realize Brant was standing there looking at me.
“Brett?”
Lost, I look at him, “I…..I’m…..are ya sure ya got it all? I…..uh, I….uhm…..the nightmares showed me the snakes trying ta kill the two people I love the most……………”
“Who?”
“Shawna an’ Amelia.”
“Weird, I’d a’ thought it’d be Olivia.” He paused, “Come on, we ca’ do more scans in the med bay wid Apex.”
The mist and fog in the bathroom was almost gone when I heard the door open. Even through the closed door of the bath, I could taste that it was Amelia. I turned the water in the sink on to brush my teeth, but instead stared longer into the mirror.
Brant’s comments had hurt…..that he thought Livy wasn’t the most important person in my life. I thought that’d be obvious. I was willing ta give up all this, wanted ta give up all this ta protect her, ta do anything ta make her happy. But that really wasn’t giving anything up, I guess. What really proved it was that I was willing to keep her here, to let her train, to let her…..chase her dreams, as much as they horrified me.
But…..as I sat there through all of Apex’s scans and Brant’s lectures on why I should know more about the technological wonders within the base, I only partially listened. I don’t know why I knew this, but I knew absolutely that the dream had never threatened Livy. I don’t know how or why that made sense, but I knew it more than I knew anything in my life.
I walked out of the bath with just a towel wrapped around my waste to find her standing there, not nervous but……excited.
She told me of her conversation with William about enhanced armor for Livy, and shame swept through me. Shame that I hadn’t done it already, anger because she did do it because I was trying to slow Livy down, to squeeze a few more weeks of less worry. I hurt so much about missing the first thirteen years. I knew I was throwing up irrational roadblocks, things I hoped Livy would fail. I knew Amelia wanted to protect her too, but it just felt….wrong. The ultimate insult though was when Amelia said we could wait to give it to her until I felt she was ready……anger surged briefly at the illusion of control she was offering. So angry, I was always so angry, so driven by pain that I was losing all perspective.
As she stepped into me to hold me, somehow she could see all the rage and hurt and pain running through me. I told her then, I told her of the alien infection that rampaged through my body. I told her how the others carved my body apart. I told her of the dream where I tried to kill her with the snakes. She didn’t even flinch, no tremor, no gasp, no pain, nothing. How could she not react to the monstrous images I recounted to her, how could she not say something, run in fear, hide, tremor, shiver, something?
After, as we lay there, she didn’t say anything about the…..needs I sometimes had. She just gave me what I needed, she knew what I needed…..and I took it. She held me from behind as we lay curled on the bed, and the tears of guilt and pain shuddered through my body…..I didn’t deserve any of this love. Yet I was desperate to have it all, even though I knew what I wanted would hurt them all.
Last Dreams 