Fight to Forget (Sunstreaker x OC)

9

Murder Melody - Cult to Follow
Deep End - I Prevail
The Night - Disturbed
Monster in Your Mind - BROACH
*Pick Me Up - Too Close To Touch (even if you don't like my usual suggestions, I highly recommend this song for this chapter)

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Fyi, this chapter is rough. It's going into her PTSD in a lot more depth, and I'm only gonna get worse from here. Read at your own risk.
☆☆☆

Melissa had thought going to a bar to drink would help her forget the memories. But it hadn't. It had only made everything worse.

Now there was nothing she could think about except the other times she'd gotten into trouble at bars, the time she'd spent with her unit. The fights they'd started and ended together. The men who'd tried hitting on her or the other girls only to walk away with a limp, talking falsetto and repenting of ever having approached their damn table. Their little motley group of troublemakers had been closer than family, closer than a marriage. They'd been through hell together, and laughed about it when it was over.

The times they'd spent in the Bradley's, just waiting to roll out, for hours and hours upon end with nothing to do but stress about when the actual fight was going to start. The time they'd crawled through human shit to reach a target only for the mission to get scrapped last minute after they'd already been soaked to the bone without a possibility of a shower or clean clothes. The times they'd been so sick with diarrhea from the bacteria in the water and the constant heat, they'd come up with a game to see who could shit the farthest, just because it kept them from thinking about how horrible they felt through it all. Everything they'd done, they'd done together, and they'd gotten through it together. She'd trusted them implicitly to have her back. And they had. They always had. Right up until the day they each died right in front of her useless fucking eyes.

All those times she'd spent with them, and now they were all dead. She was the only one who'd survived. The only one that had lived long enough to see her discharge papers. They were the reason she'd been given an honorable discharge. It should've been a medical discharge, but she was a Medal of Honor recipient. The brass didn't want to embarrass their hero. They'd made it her choice.

But it hadn't been much of a choice. It would've been easier if they'd just shot her in the head right there. Heaven knows she's shoved her own gun in her mouth often enough, tasting metal and fear on her tongue, staring at the upside-down handle in her face and trying not to wonder what her brains would look like plastered to the wall behind her. Her fingers had been shaking hard enough it was a wonder she hadn't accidentally pulled the trigger. The impulse to just let go always came in waves, pulling her under, making her feel like she was drowning in her own black sea of grief and anger.

Lately it had been memories of how close she'd come to death over the years that set her off, left her shaking as her mind went over all the ways it could've-- should've-- gone wrong. The day she'd watched Joanne step on an IED. The firefight that had cut down Chawn and Tanner. The RPG that had ripped apart her closest friend right in front of her eyes while she'd been hiding behind a burnt-out car. She'd barely been cognizant of what she'd done after that, but they'd given her a damn medal for it. She didn't deserve it. She deserved to be buried in the dirt beside the rest of her dead.

Eternal rest seemed like a better reward than living alone with what went on in her head.

Over and over and over again. She wished somebody would just take her off repeat before she could snap and really lose her mind. The doctors already thought she was a near-miss away from going postal and sending her men home in body bags. What the hell else could she possibly stand to lose here?