Note- This is a continuation of my SOA fanfic titled "From Love." Please read that first to understand this story.
Disclaimer- I do not own any of the characters in the sons of anarchy universe, they all belong to the ingenious Kurt Sutter. I only...
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Joint Forces reserve center, Houston, Texas June 10th, 2014 9:45pm
As soon as our plane touched down in the states, I went home, to my house on base, and took a shower. It was something I always did after deployment, even though I'd shower before the flight home, just to make sure I was fully cleansed of all the sand, sweat, and blood I had shed over in the 'Stan. It wasn't just a physical thing though. It was also a ritual for me... an act of self care, a way to ground myself in the present, and shed the mental load of deployment. It was a way to remind myself that I was home, that I'd survived again.
This shower, like every other shower after coming back, lasted hours, and when I finally stepped out, I wiped the steam off of the mirror and stood there, taking in my reflection. The woman staring back at me was different. Hardened. Leaner. My hair was shorter now, cut into a blunt bob that stopped right underneath my chin, and made me look sharper, and more mature. My arms, once soft, and less toned, were now cut with light muscles, and ridges from two years of physical training and survival. My abs, something I'd never had, were now rigid and more pronounced.
And my eyes... They were now devoid of light. Distant, cold even. But if I'm being honest with myself, I don't think that was anything new. I think my eyes had gone dark long before I even thought about joining the military.
I leaned forward, tracing a finger over the faint scar above my collarbone, and then my hand drifted over to the deep scar in my shoulder, where an enemy bullet had grazed me. Just a few of many marks left from the endless hours in the field.
My eyes lingered there for a moment, as the images of everything I'd seen, and gone through replayed in my mind. I had some pretty gory memories from overseas, but they never shook me. Even as they came flooding back just now. Back before I enlisted, I would've probably tensed up thinking about the people I killed. Like Frankie, Jasmine, Monae, and Ima. There used to be times where I would think about what I did to them, and I would feel a sudden pain in my stomach from anxiety, but now, that pain was like a distant memory.
In the mirror, I caught a glimpse of the small photo of me and Jax, that I kept tucked in the corner. It was old, from back before my world fell apart. It was a picture Jess sneakily took of the two of us as we sat outside the clubhouse at the picnic tables. He was sitting behind me as I leaned back into him, talking with our fingers intertwined. We were both smiling through our words. Happy, and oblivious to the world around us.
I stared at that picture longer than I intended. The smile I had in it felt so foreign for some reason, like it belonged to someone else. Like it belonged to a girl who didn't understand how fragile happiness was, or how quickly it could be ripped away. I knew I should've thrown it out a long time ago, since Jax and I were over, but I liked to look at it as a reminder of happier times, or at least that's what I told myself. It was easier than admitting I kept it simply because I wasn't over Jax. Shaking my head, I went on to moisturize my body, before turning to grab my satin robe off the door hook.
