Promps

🍵 Soldiers Baby

> Slight warning for serious topics; back story for an oc of mine

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Dinner was late on the stove and a cigarette was lit to keep the hunger at bay. Tobacco wasn't filling nor was it healthy but it let Sasha do something with her mouth instead of grinding her teeth or biting her lips. She had accidentally drawn blood a few times already for how cracked they were.

Smoke billowed in the room making her jerk back to cough. It sounded akin to her body telling her no and to spit the cigarette out. She had never been one to try addictive substances but that need for a filling was strong. It was stronger than the alcohol smell in the room. After a final heave, Sasha took a long drag and managed to keep it down this time as she opened the freezer to withdraw a TV dinner. 

Sasha opened it with the sound of plastic and popped it into the microwave giving her plenty of time to flick her cigarette ashes into a tray and seat herself at the table. Papers of bills and forms from the hospital had brought her to tears multiple times before but now, she was too tired to cry. Leaning her head back against the chair she blew out a circle of smoke and sighed as she toyed with her knuckles.

Her husband was leaving her and she couldn't stop it. 

Couldn't wasn't a good word… It made her seem like a victim when in actuality, it had been the both of them that had gotten themselves in the current mess they were in. The best word to describe her hopelessness in the high school marriage was that it was expected. 

Her husband was leaving her and she expected it. 

Sasha was a tough woman who never asked for help and worked day and night. It was what she did best and what she believed was her favorable quality. And it truly was. She climbed ranks, broke records, and used her earthbending ability as a training method in the Army. Captáin Granite was her nickname because of it. A cheesy name but it fits when she could mold the very ground underneath and still be as smooth and fine as a countertops surface.

While she was good and pretentious she had her faults and personal struggles. One was learning to have peace, just to sit down and talk. When she and her husband had gotten married it was a blur of emotions that she never really had time to fully realize. Sasha came to understand the obvious struggles as mere factors of marriage instead of dealing with them properly. Before Sasha knew it she was pregnant and if emotions were rough, they became harder to deal with then.

Sasha was never good at decorating. She had no touch of any real beauty even on herself and so as she attempted to make her apartment personalized it never happened. It had always bugged her and it was something she never confided to her husband. It was dumb, so it was swept under the rug along with other things. That being complications during the pregnancy.

It was short-lived; only four months in before she had to deliver a stillborn. That heartbreaking feeling of holding the tiny baby was too much for either of them. Separating or even not going through with the quick marriage was needed long before this point. This just seemed like a wake-up call. The baby wasn't allowed to stay long, a quick kiss on his head and he was gone. It was like a nightmare Sasha lived in because she ultimately proved her character wrong. She was weak.

So here she was back in the present. Sasha's eyes opened to hear the beeping of the microwave and the smell of gravy wafting from the meal. Sasha sat up, wiping tears away before she put the cigarette out. Slumping against the table she would have sighed low. Her family, her marriage, and now her son all were gone faster than she could have processed. But at the end of the day, she was not a quitter. This was her challenge, her life. She had to take hold of it the best she could and love more people than she should. What else did she have to lose now? 

After getting up to get her meal, she would have glanced at the table. 

"I'll deal with you after a run."