Project 43: Healing

How have you been?

The morning would have probably started out better if Elias had slept at all. All through the night, he had been too busy pacing around, stressing about seeing the person he considered his best friend. Dimitri had never rejected Elias. When the former soldier was just a shell of a person, always on the run, Dimitri saw through the cold exterior and broken shell and offered his friendship. When Elias needed a place to stay, Dimitri was quick to drive hours to pick him up and let him crash on his couch for weeks. When Dimitri found out about Elias' past, he didn't freak out or run away, he always stayed there. Still, Elias couldn't help the uneasy feeling that didn't let him fall asleep.

It had been a long time since he felt so alone as he had that night, hiding in the corner of the room, afraid of his own mind and the tricks it was trying to play on him. He despised admitting it but at some point during the endless night, he realized how much he missed the people he had lived with. He didn't like how attached he had grown to them, to his brother who he still wanted to despise, but in the moonlit room, he had to face the painful facts. He once again had people he relied on.

 The sun rose at a painful pace, each little ray of light finding the longest possible route into the small room Elias found himself tucked in. With the light came the hope of seeing a friend Elias hadn't faced in too long. After the restless night, he was able to push the uneasy feeling back into the little dark hole where it originated. In its place was anticipation for what the day was going to bring.

Before the sun was fully in the sky, Elias had packed the little belongings he had and slipped out through the back door. The little alleyway he found himself in was filled with trashcans, bugs, and maybe a couple of stray cats somewhere in the darkness. It was like all the dirt and darkness of the country was hidden in those sinful avenues. After a quick glance around the area, Elias lifted his hood up, stuck his hands in his pockets, and started his trek toward the bus stop.

The bus was almost empty except for a young man who was trying to survive home after a rough night. Elias watched the boy from his seat at the back of the bus and observed how the man hunched over after every turn, almost expecting him to spew up whatever he had been able to stuff down his throat the previous day. The bus driver seemed to be completely oblivious to the situation on board his bus. By the looks of it, he should have been deep in retirement by then but looked to be enjoying his job. At least he smiled very widely at Elias as he stepped on board and stuttered a very broken "Hello" after first trying to say something in his first language.

As the bus came to a rigid stop, the boy almost flew out of his seat and ran out, not before waving an apologetic goodbye to the friendly old man behind the wheel. Elias got up after scanning the area outside the bus. The end station was on a bridge of some kind on top of a metro station Elias needed to get into. Sadly, he had lost the cover of the dusk as the city center was now filled with people in pantsuits and trousers on their way to work, their briefcases clashing against one another as they politely bowed their heads to the people they accidentally brushed against. Luckily, Elias could blend into the mass of human flesh, acting as a clueless tourist trying to find the castle.

The loneliness and desperation Elias had been drowning in the previous night had been pushed somewhere deep behind his calculative walls. The second Elias was in a public space, his brain was running a hundred miles in a second, trying to analyze every possible outcome, escape route, and threat. His mission was to make it on board a Meijo line headed south.

Elias was prepared to shove himself into the train cart, but there was more than enough space for him to sit down across from a woman, decades younger than him but, by the looks of it, old enough to be his mother. The train pushed forward at a speed Elias still had a hard time processing, as he glanced out the useless window at the rapidly passing faint blurs of lights. being underground was not something the former trench soldier enjoyed, even if being in a metro was widely different from lying in a trench.