No Bravery | dunkirk au

Praying

TW: some scenes in this chapter are going to be violent and extremely triggering. Read at your own discretion. 

Somewhere in Italy, unknown time: 

She lived her life in fear, now. 

Everyday, before she opened her eyes and remembered her name and what had happened to her, and what had led her to that very place, the first thing that registered in her brain was fear. 

She did no longer tremble, she did no longer scream, she did no longer cower. Fear had become so deeply entwined in her that she did not need such mundane actions to show she was afraid. She just was. 

She had ceased to be whatever else it was she had been, before. 

The only thing that made her up now, apart from the blood and the bones and the muscles and the skin and the other things that to the naked eye would make up a human being, was the constant drumming of fear. 

It was right under the shell, her skin. 

She remembered once, being little, almost 6, jumping into the river that ran next to the farm she had grown up into, when her sister had been screaming at her to stop, because it was cold and she would've surely died if she did take that leap. She had done so anyway. The plunge had lasted only one second, but in her 6-year-old mind it had felt bottomless. Nothing could've prepared her for the feeling of the freezing water on her skin, under her skin, inbetween her hair, inside of her tiny nostrils. The pain she had felt, oh how deliciously agonizing! 

And it had not stopped when her sister had pulled her out, yanking her by the arm, indifferent to her cries, still pretending that the whole ordeal had not hurt like a bitch! and that, yes, her sister had been right, and that probably yes she would've gotten a cold and wouldn't have been able to be of assistance in the house for weeks on end! 

The cold had clung to her tiny shivering form, permeating the thin layer of skin she could see whenever she would nibble at her finger's skin, just under her tiny white nails. It had lodged itself in there, and for days she had shivered and been colder than it was normal to be. 

That was what fear had done to her, same as the cold water of the river when she was almost 6: it had permeated her skin, settling itself right under the epidermis. It was now a part of her, so laced with her that she had forgotten what it meant to live - even for just a second - as she had before. 

But then again, she also reckoned that perhaps she didn't deserve to go back to the way she had been before. So carefree, so stupid, so inherently and fundamentally childish, believing herself to be invincible and eternal, because she had lasted that long during a war that had decimated the popoulation, taking away so many people she had loved and been friendly with her whole life. 

She had thought she was always right, that she always had the correct opinion. She thought that whatever she thought was true and anyone who dared disagree with her was only doing it because they were just jealous or out of spite because she was the only one holding all the answers. 

Oh, how stupid she had been! 

Childish, delusional little girl!

She had only gotten lucky. And for too long, because her time was up! 

And the worst part about all of that?

She deserved it. She fucking deserved everything that had happened to her! 

She deserved to die! 

She lived her life in fear, but not because she was afraid to die. No, death would've been welcome at her doorstep, a relief even.