dreamland (bill skarsgard one shots)

10. the aftermath

WARNINGS: angst, mentions of injury and death, some sexual content towards the end

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The night was too quiet. Deafeningly so.

He could not sleep. Hadn't been able to do so properly for months now, his brain in too much of a jumble to allow him the rest he so desperately needed. He sat in the old wicker chair in the corner of the bedroom, right near the window, with a cigarette perched between his fingers and eyes that stared off into space.

Those same eyes drifted across the room, where he then gazed upon the woman asleep in his bed. You, seemingly at peace and completely oblivious to the horror that was the world, if only for a few hours. But in reality, he knew that you were not at peace, nor had you been for a while now, and it was all because of him.

He'd left you alone. Despite the fact that he was there, finally home with you after being gone for so long, he still wasn't all there. He'd come back as only half a man, something inside of him having broken off during his time away. He was not the same man he once was, and in the depths of his being, he knew that he would never be able to be that man again.

And that was what terrified him the most.

He reflected back on how things used to be, before he was shipped off to fight in that godawful war. You'd both been so happy, newlyweds still in their honeymoon phase. You were dreamers, planning out your future, talking of what life would be like once you settled down and had little ones of your own. He'd promised to build you a big house in the country, room for your family to grow.

When he was enlisted, your lives had to be put on hold. He'd left with the promise that when he came back, you would do all those things you'd dreamed of. But now here he was, seated in a rickety old chair in the corner of the grungy, one room apartment you'd been living in since before the war, on his fourth cigarette of the night, knowing that those dreams were no more.

He'd tucked them away in drawer, locking them up tight somewhere in his brain. While there were times he would take them out and admire him, as if they were a piece of pretty lace from your sewing drawer, he would end up putting them back all over again.

The old Bill would have been in bed with his wife, holding her sleeping form to his chest, or maybe making love to her. But he had not done either of those things in a long time. The last time he'd touched you in the ways you deserved to be touched was the night he'd come back. It was a sweet reunion, and the only time he'd been truly happy since his return.

He was not happy now. When he looked at you, he only saw someone who deserved better. He couldn't sleep next to you anymore. Not because he didn't want to, but because he always woke up sobbing due to the nightmares that ebbed through his brain. He couldn't stomach them anymore, which was why he'd taken to not sleeping.

Every night, he'd lay in bed with you until you fell asleep, and then he would get up, using coffee and cigarettes to get him through. Sometimes, during the day, he would fall asleep. But he would always jar awake at any loud sound. There were times, coming out of a sleepy stupor, when he forgot where he was. It was especially bad when he'd first returned.

As of late, those instances had grown few and far between. But the nightmares were still there. The memories of watching his men die, seeing people sustain the most gruesome injuries imaginable, seeing the hate and wicked rage in the eyes of his enemy, all still burned through his mind. He would never forget.