No Bravery | dunkirk au

Peacekeepers

TW: Some scenes in these chapters are gonna be very graphic and violent. Read at your own discretion. 

January 1st, 1945: 

Alex's heart had hardened like polar ice. 

Darkened, even. 

This was what who knew him would've told you: gone was the Alex who was thoughtful and just and had been considered adequate to be third-in-command in the Compagnia by not one but both of his superiors - now dead. 

This, on the other hand, was what who didn't know Alex would've told you: Alex didn't have a heart. Never had one. He was a demon.

This, instead, was what Alex would've had to say about the situation: nothing. On the bad days, per say. 

On the good-ish days Alex would've agreed with the people who didn't know him: he did not have a heart, he was a demon. And he liked his hands dripping with blood. Enemies' blood, to be exact. 

On the bad days Alex didn't wanna say anything, nor did he want to listen to anything anyone had to say about anything that concerned him. 

The only thing he liked hearing were the screams of the enemies he had managed to get his hands onto, as he made sure they suffered. 

Alex had never shied away from the violence that often came with battles: the brawls, the nasty hand-to-hand combat, the killing by fire, the killing by blade - whatever it was, he knew he had to do it: it was either him or the other person. 

That was before. 

Now - after - Alex not only did not shy away from any of it: Alex openly sought it out. Even when it was not necessary, Alex always found a way to make sure blood would be dripping by the end of what he had intended to do in the first place. 

Had it always been like this, even in the after? Perhaps not. Perhaps it had came, with each passing day. Perhaps it had been the only way out of the roar inside of his head: masking it with the roars of sharp and significant pain of others - people that did not deserve to live - seemed like a good enough idea. 

Even roars of pain turned into numb white noise, given the right amount of time, after all. 

And Alex had time. A lot of it. More than he could actually fathom. 

It seemed as if time had stopped moving at the right pace, ever since that day - the last day of his before. 

Time, he had believed, moved like a straight line, endless and precise; accurate and exact. Always at the same pace: whether you were able to keep up with it was your problem. Time did not take it upon itself to taunt with you. It just went. 

He had been proved wrong, on yet another thing. 

Time, he now knew for a fact, was a circle, repetitive and abhorrent; strenuous and draining. Always at the same pace, the same day repeating over and over again. Like an endless circle he had entered on the first day of his after. 

Time was taunting him, had been taunting him for almost 365 days now: giving him plenty of space to come to terms with what had happened, by making him wake up and repeat his every action, day to day.

Small variations were, however, sprinkled in by some unknown hand; just to keep him from tipping that very thin line that stood between apathy and complete folly. 

Some days were fuller than others, in terms of events that a small part of his brain - the rational one, the one that he had locked away just to be able to go on with his actions without actually thinking too much about them - knew were, one day in the future (although he did not know how near that future might be), going to be considered historical and of great importance.