The Citizen Soldier (DNF)

24) Aftermath

*George POV*

It stung, that's what I remembered.

The stinging, the tearing, it was somehow so addictive. How was it so addictive?

I hated every inch of me with every cell. I glared at the bandages that wrapped my arm. Four and a half years down, thirty minutes clean. I looked up at the sky, still with its cumulous clouds roaming the sky with free, graceful tiny movements. Unlike me, I was shackled down by my past. The reservations, the terror... everything that I've seen, done, had happened to me...

It was all coming back, resurging in the worst, most terrifying flood to ever grace my soul. It was coming back like that again, and it was pushing hard against the walls that I had so carefully built up from the rubble that was leftover at the ripe old age of thirteen. It was all coming back with such vividness, such terrible thoughts, that I thought that I may as well have died back then too. But those weren't good thoughts, I had to keep those outside my walls, and if they snuck through, I let it down just long enough to shove it back through and pretend that it never existed. The insecurity door hit everyone on the way out.

I always knew that I needed to stop and slow down when it became nigh impossible to breathe the oxygen that was so incredibly essential to our survival as the earth in general. I found it difficult to bring myself to eat. I was falling back into old patterns, ones that I'd long cleared, and I wasn't about to succumb to them.

But then how did I deal with it? A nap wouldn't work, and my cuts were itching. I felt like throwing up, and I wanted to talk to Sap but why would he talk to me? He's at work right now, not going out and playing laser tag with an emotionally damaged man who had convinced himself that he was getting better and was on a steady path to recovery. He had more important things to do, more important things to think about.

I wasn't one of them and I'd accepted that long ago. The next biggest distraction that I could see was probably the art gallery and the library. But those were far away, and I had to consider with myself whether or not I actually wanted to go, for realisies, or if I was just being a hopeful person, thinking that the library of all places would distract me from my thoughts.

Well, it does to an effective job of sucking me into the wonderful world of Ancient Greece.

Trigger Warning: Violence, Pain

I sighed and stood up, stretched my arms and shook the sleepiness from my veins. Blinking, I went behind the wheel. I patted the steering wheel like normal and I set off for my journey to the library. When I got to the parking lot I locked the car and started to climb the stairs, but I tripped and caught myself with my arms. Now, that wouldn't have been much of a problem aside from the possibility of a scraped palm on a normal day, but the injury that I'd inflected on myself made that statement untrue.

My arms buckled and I called out in pain. My arms buckling made it so that most of my weight went to my bad arm, and my chest fell down on it and I tumbled to the side, wrenching myself away from my arm. The back of my head hit the concrete steps and I started to crash down the short flight of stairs.

Pushing myself up to my feet, I was almost immediately knocked down again by a redhead that seemed to have some sort of superiority complex built up inside their soul. I scrambled to my feet as soon as possible again, ignoring the throbbing pain in my everything. Just when I was about to regain my balance, I was once again shoved by splayed palms and hurtful arms. My tailbone hit the ground painfully and I kept in a groan of pain while holding an acid-filled glare to the one who pushed me.

"You don't get the right to stand unless I say so, you creep. Who even are you, street rat? Whose car dija steal?"

"Okay, fist of all, my name is George. Second of all, I didn't steal the car, I got it myself." A half-lie, Sapnap helped me buy it, but it was mine.

"Fundy, don't believe you for a second George. Seriously, who buys that crap from a street rat like you?"

My blood boils, an emotion that I was not accustomed to. I felt a growl growing in my throat as I pushed myself to me feet once more, only to be shoved down again. "Stay down, dog."

That was it. I snapped.

"I'm not a street rat! I'm not a dog! Do I look like some sort of animal to you? If so, I suggest getting your eyes checked, because your vision is worse than even mine."

Of course, this would have only meant anything to anyone present if they knew about my color blindness. I adjusted the sunglasses atop my head as they'd been knocked askew by Fundy in the multiple times that he'd pushed me. As I did so I stood to my full height. He went for another shove, but I sidestepped and watched him nearly fall over. The only real issue was that he'd made eye contact with my bandages.

Apparently he decided that if he was going down, I'd go with him.

He grabbed my bandaged arm and pulled me down while I screamed and tried to hit him off to no avail. Tears jolted to my eyes as Fundy twisted. I was debilitated and Fundy was faster. He got up and pinned my arm under his knee, and I groaned in pain. I closed my eyes and tried to think through all the styrofoam that was stuffing my head. It was hard to hear anything as well, with nothing short of agony radiating from my arm once more.

I didn't understand how there weren't people that were ready at the drop of a hat to come to my aid. Perhaps it was because I was homeless and it showed, so I must be a druggie, or a drunk, or I had a gambling addiction or something and the world would be a better place for everyone if I were quashed like a bug under a ten-year-old's thumb. It made me want to throw up.

I did the only thing that made any semblance of logical sense in my brain and I bit. Fundy yelped and jumped up from his spot long enough for me to fly up the stairs and through the library doors at speeds unheard of for someone who's head was surely not quite clear at the moment. I could hear Fundy cursing from behind the doors that I was hiding close to. My breathing was rapid, uneven, and I felt like I was on the verge of a heart attack. I looked down at my bandages.

They had long since been soaked through with blood, and I could feel that the wounds had tore deeper and wider when Fundy kneeled on them and such.

I was so afraid to look at the aftermath.