Grayscale

Chapter Twenty-Three

Bandages covered my arms, and we didn't talk about it.

All I could think about was how I wished Reed was still alive.

I wished there was something I could do to change what had happened, to bring him back.

Jesus, I would have given anything to be able to clean up that mess. I would have given anything to bring him back, to listen to him talk about the color of the sky, and the broken fountain, and how much he loved his dead girlfriend. Just to hear his laugh again, or see the way he would look at me when he knew it was a bad day, just hear him tell me one more time that things would get better, that even if I couldn't see it now, there was a light.

I wished that this wasn't the light. He thought that this was supposed to be my happily ever after, but slit-wrists and a stranger soulmate wasn't my idea of a fairy tale. And there was no happy ending that didn't include Reed. I missed him so bad it made my head spin, and he'd barely been gone five hours.

Was I selfish for wanting him back? Was I selfish for needing him? Surely, he was in a better place now, but god damn it, he could've waited a few decades to get there. He was going to spend all of eternity frolicking in frickin' daisy fields with the love of his life, but helloooo there were still a lot of people here who were missing the shit out of him already. I wasn't the only one who would do anything to wake up and do the day over again with a happy ending, one that didn't involve body bags. Was it so wrong to wish he had waited for that perfect eternity so we could have enjoyed his company a little longer?

"Penny for your thoughts?" Gabriel asked. He hadn't acknowledged me much since we had started driving, but I figured he probably just had a lot to wrap his mind around. This night had definitely been overwhelming for the both of us.

"Take a guess," I sighed.

"Hmm . . ." I pulled my legs up to my chest, which was actually pretty easy. The front seat was roomy. Putting my head on my knees, I glanced over to see him do the same to me. "Puppies. That's definitely it. Or maybe flowers. Oh - wait! I know, you're thinking about how hot I would look in yoga pants. That's it." His lips turned up at the corners, but I could see the concern in his eyes.

I couldn't help but chuckle a little bit though, and my mind did flit to the image of him parading around in yoga pants. "Well, I am now." And, damn. The man could work those pants.

"Mission accomplished then."

"Penny for yours?" I asked.

He paused for a second, considering his response. "Combat," he finally said. "That's what I'm thinking about."

This gave me pause. Gabriel had served. That was how he met my dad. But what could cause him to be thinking of that now? "Combat?" I asked, perplexed.

"That's what mental illness is like. It's like a battlefield. It's messy, and everything sucks, and you spend a lot of time wishing you were doing anything else but dealing with that. You win some and you lose some. Sometimes it's quieter, and there's not a lot of action, and sometimes there's so much going on that you forget to breathe." As he spoke, my chest began to constrict, remembering the night, remembering every night where my head was a battlefield. What he was saying hit close to home. "And then there are some nights where you come so close to throwing the towel in, telling the sergeant you're done, that you can't do it anymore. You can't stand being out there, the day in day out of everything sucks, and you know what you're doing is going to provide a happy ending somewhere down the line, but you just can't see it, so all you want to do is give up." He sighed. "When you're pulling that trigger, when you're having a breakdown, it seems like nothing is ever going to get better. It does though." The car started to decelerate, and I looked out the window to see that we were pulling into the parking lot of a hotel. "You leave that battlefield eventually, and you get to come home, and everything is bright and beautiful, and you can't believe you ever thought about giving up before, because look at what you're fighting for. Isn't it worth it? Isn't this worth it?"