HOME | DD

Description
Scott's timing was quite perfect. The stroll down memory lane had to turn a corner to the events after he had been knocked out, and that was when he needed to adjust the temperature so it was burning him again. Now that the trauma was over with, he could reward himself with the highlights of the weeks that had followed. Of course it wasn't all cosy at first.

An explosion. That was all Scott saw at first. Then he felt the shockwave pull him backwards, and keep pulling, for miles and miles, at the speed of light. But the jet was still keeping up. It was so close now, the green and blue patched jet, the white flames propelling it. The turret barrel was fading into an intense scarlet. As he felt himself, saw himself, being pulled through space and time, his only focus was that the jet was getting closer, ready tom blast him out of reality. The single part of it that stuck out suddenly ejected, and he saw the cockpit. It was the torso flying it. Then a beam of black fire blasted out the barrel, ringing with the sound of a fear-saturated scream.
Suddenly he was in more control. He didn't want the flames so he made them go away. But his thoughts randomly faded between that jet and a sunset cliff, crawling out of a flipped over car. Was he awake? What was happening? All he knew was that it was chaos, nothing was stable, he just wanted everything to go blank.
One forever later, while incredibly drowsy, he managed to distinguish sleep from closed eyes. His thoughts were stable, time was back on track, his eyes were open. Another perfectly white too, but thankfully no portholes. He saw the sun slipping through the blinds, a fair white cracking past the slits of the shields. But the light wasn't harsh, it was somewhat serene. It gave him a small reason to wake up. What gave him a better reason was when Hardy walked in.

"Morning." he stated. It was when he entered he took full stock of his room. Not on a ship. Definitely a hospital room judging by the I.V. stuck in his arm. Somewhere foreign judging by the different language wrote on the equipment. He had several questions, but one took priority.
"Alison..."
"Is fine. Alive, stitched up, on drugs and has a splint. A few days and she'll be up and about."
"Cool..."he was feeling a lot better about that, but he was still overall depressingly fear-stricken, he still didn't know enough and what he did know he wish he could forget. Like his eye. "The others?"
"Shaken up but alive. Jack's leg wasn't cut too badly so he's fine, and physically, Carrie is fine. A little catatonic at times though..." Oh god. That was him. That was his fault. He subjected her to all that, all the screaming and the blood. How could he be so selfish? He had to go to her, he had to... He was instantly floored by the slashing of knives at his skin when he tried to sit up.
"Easy! Easy! Easy mate, you should NOT be up. You are on a LOT of morphine and you are SERIOUSLY injured... " he trailed off. Oh god. What was it? He "and...your eye's gone mate, the socket is... empty. I'm sorry." He was expecting this, but the news still stung him. He would have slumped in shock if he wasn't already completely flat on his back. All this ran very slowly through his mind though, his drowsiness still hadn't gone. Most likely the morphine was inducing it. More...

More answers. "Where are we?"
"Well, we're in France... don't you want to talk about what happened to your- "
"Priorities... tell me more things." He didn't want to talk about his eye now. He needed a distraction.
"Like what?" Hardy questioned. Like what indeed... several questions, where to start...
"Clooney. Dead?"
"Yes" he replied in monotone, but with a hint of regret. "Still, the way you were clasping at his throat, I didn't think he was walking out of there either way."
"I hated him for what he did to Alison, he was an incompetent bastard. I wanted him to crawl back in his mother's womb and unfertilize himself. Not burn to death."
"How long have I been out?"
"Around twenty eight hours. Granted some of that was down to the morphine and surgery, you were out for about half of that after Sheffield-"
"How long till I leave?"
"It'll be a week before you leave intensive care, to make sure your eye is safe, after all there was a small but potent cut to a vital blood vessel. You'll need a month to recover over all."
"A month?" Damn... He should've figured, but that was still a shock.
"Yeah, but at least your recovery will be relatively full. You should consider yourself lucky really, the floor made incisions into your skin but barely missed your insides, barely I might add."
"You think my eye will grow back?" he replied sarcastically. His socket sure as hell wasn't full.
"You'll be getting a glass eye, specifically a visual prosthetic... I know I can't make the shock go away but I want you to know, your life won't change dramatically. You'll get a glass eye - no I've said that, um..." this was strange. Hardy was, for the few minutes he knew him, a self proclaimed arsehole, a cheesy movie cliché dickhead who didn't care either way and didn't break his stride. What the hell was this? Why was he being... human? "You won't... be deformed noticeably, your life won't change as drastically as you think it will."
He asked bluntly "You're nice. Why?"
"What?" Hardy was clearly taken by this.
"You. Are. Being. Nice. For an arsehole you sure are being less arsey. You're all concerned and stuff. Could it be the stone cold solider has a heart?" he asked in mock curiosity.
"Well... my job is reliant on the safety-"
"Bullshit, that's a front. Why?" The silence could be cut with a damn knife. It lasted for several seconds before Hardy sighed and confessed.
"I don't make friends. The ones I have suffice."
"Why?"his tone remained just as hard. He was owed an explanation.
"Because... my best friend was killed in action. It destroyed me. I still haven't come back. And, stupidly cliché as this is, I don't want people getting close to me just to have them killed off. And you were essentially in a small coma, I didn't want responsibility or familiarity of someone so frail."
"You're right. That is stupid" he said, much more gently. He was understanding now. He empathized with him, he once thought that was a viable option after the crash. There was a small amount of laughter between them. He liked this, this new Hardy. He felt much more familiar, easier. "Look, your life's just gonna go down the shitter if you keep that up, take it from the half-orphan with anger issues. Besides, getting over the loss of an eye is sure gonna be easier with a friend."
"I guess" he replied with a slight smile. Scott slowly raised his arm for a handshake. It was effort so had better damn accept it. Fortunately he did, and a very firm grip. This did not surprise him, at the end of the day he was still a soldier. And, from what he saw with the bazooka, a badass one.
"There anything else you want to know?"
"Probably but hell if I remember. For now, I'm gonna face-plant a pillow and wait to see if I flat-line."
"Fair enough. You call the doctor if you want to talk to me."
"Will do. For the record I'm feeling a bit better now" he lied. He was slightly comforted but at the end of the day, he was in a warzone, had seen a bloody torso, lost an eye, saw his friend sliced up, watched a man die, and had experienced more pain than several years of his life combined. By rights he should have been completely broken in the inside. And he felt himself breaking. He needed time alone to deal with it. Like he dealt with his dad's death. But he was too drowsy to rip anything apart.

The next week ran very slowly and riddled with the same nightmare about the jet, but that didn't stop the boredom. French doctors visited him by the bed. Food was brought to him in the bed. Jack cracked up jokes with him near the bed. Alison hobbled over to the fucking bed. But the bed was absent of one character in particular. Carrie never showed. He stayed in bed all day, with his extensive injury. His friends comfort, Jacks joking and the psychologist that turned up every day helped relieve some of the hell he was going through. But without Carrie, his guilt over her only broadened and got worried sick. He begged to know why she wasn't visiting. His friends kept making excuses, she kept going to the city or the beach, she was talking to a hospital-prescribed therapist, or he was asleep when she visited. And he was sick of it. He kept flipping between anger at her and at himself. He had to see her. He had to see how she was, had to thank her, to say sorry to her, to see if she was o.k. Eventually he got his chance when she walked straight past his room.
He was turned over, trying looking out the window, just wanting to go outside. God he missed fresh air. And Carrie. He was sick of being so damn depressed. And sick of fantasizing. Out of spite he quickly threw himself the other way, refusing to look at the sunlight. He then caught a glimpse of a leather jacket and fiery red hair. His heart pounded, his brain went numb, his muscles froze, all over that one glimpse. What would he do? What could he say? These thoughts ran round his head only after calling out her name. But he got no response. He called out louder. Nothing. He needed her and he would be damned if she was going to get away. He hadn't been up because of his injuries to his torso, they left him in agony whenever he tried to get up. He was getting up for this.

The ship floor sliced him a thousand times over as he yanked himself away from the morphine and moved himself slowly. He shouted Carries name as constantly but she had disappeared. Where was she? The doctors and nurses were confused and alarmed by his shouting, then he heard the familiar voice of his doctor from behind him, shouting something in French. He figured it was directed at the staff considering they all began striding towards him. Carrie. They all surrounded him, talking at him in French and broken English. He tried to barge past them but they were not letting him through. He kept shouting her name again and again. He was getting angry now. Why couldn't they understand? Why wasn't she coming? And, after several moments of this, he snapped. "Move Frog!" He gave the pasty blond nurse in front of him a harsh uppercut, knocking him off his feet, then harshly shoved a tall brunette doctor out of balance and into a door. He tried to move but was being dragged down, grabbed by the other doctors. Just in time he saw the needle, a sedative. The doctor who approached him with it was met with a swift kick to the stomach. He was not backing down. They were trying to pull him away, just like the shockwaves in his dreams, and now he could fight them back...
"STOP!" a voice cried out desperately. It was Carrie, standing at the end of the corridor. He instantly did what he was told. He froze in his exact position. The whole ward froze in its position. It just watched the fire haired girl stand there solemnly, her shoulders slumped and her eyes red. They just stared at each other, and suddenly everything was gone. The pulling was done and the pain uncontrolled by the morphine retreated subtly. For the longest time he said nothing, the just said her name. In one solemn whisper. He couldn't begin to express what swirled in his stomach. Guilt, anger, gratitude, sadness. Then she just sniffed, trying to hold back her tears, and that shattered the wall between them. He strode over to her as the sniffing became more rapid. And halfway there she just broke down and ran into him. She ran into the scars but he didn't care, he had his friend back, he didn't care about anything else, not even about the needle being stuck in his neck.

The next few days got a both better and worse. Carrie had been avoiding Scott because she was terrified of the eye and now they were in an apologizing competition with each other. The nightmares continued, and now the cockpit was made up of the interior of a wrecked car, but he didn't have to deal with it alone. He was still reliant on morphine but at least he could walk around, and he was out of the intensive care ward now that he wasn't in any danger.
But with all the positives and the negatives, one thing didn't balance out. He apologized to the staff, he felt guilty over what he did, but while several understood, the man-nurse was still pissed and had got the police involved. With the refugee camps being sorted for the evacuees and general havoc around the packed up city, Scott's case didn't take much priority since he had calmed down, but he knew there would be consequences. He was fairly worried, but not because of consequences. Because Hardy said "don't worry about it". Jack mentioned he had something planned back on the ship, and Scott had the feeling at the pit of his stomach that it was about to play out. The last time he dealt with an issue it involved punching him just above the temple and using a rocket launcher inside a ship. He reflected on his father's death, the anger that horrific experience induced, and how it got him into those fights. He asked himself why anger was how he dealt with reactions. He wondered if he was broke inside, why trauma didn't sedate his spirit, but woke a sabre fanged wolf. And now he had mauled the hand that fed him antibiotics. Not just that, he had fucked with the plans Hardy had made. Though he wasn't sure he was going to like them. Then Hardy came in and confirmed that.

Scott and Carrie were waiting in the hall, pretending to be waiting for someone to come out of the toilet. This was the instruction Hardy gave Scott, and Carrie decided to stay with him, with a good explanation. Scott would have preferred none. He couldn't believe that this, of all possible plots and schemes, this was the bloody plan. It was a mistake. A break out was an accident waiting to happen.
"How well are you feeling?" Hardy had quizzed pretty urgently.
"Fucking wonderful" Scott replied sarcastically.
"Fantastic, coz we're getting out of here."
"Wait, what?"
"We were never staying in France, too likely to be attacked. We're heading to a safe zone down south. I got us a ride on a ship to Brazil. Get up, stand by the toilet door, wait for the signal and head out. It'll probably be a bunch of alarms. Now go" he said before hurriedly striding off. Scott stuttered out some words but in all the confusion of this suddenness didn't form a proper question. So there he was, waiting for some signal, no idea what it was. Then he heard the explosion. Alarms went off all at once. Scott froze. Carrie dragged him along. Oh god, oh god, what had Hardy done? They followed all the scared and confused people outside. And outside, parked on the pavement, was a jeep with Hardy, Jack and Alison inside. "Oxygen tanks are surprisingly unreliable." What he had done? The man who saved him just took down a hospital wall. "Calm down, no-one was hurt. Now get in". Scott did as he was told, but only out of fear. He was going to Brazil with a madman.

Description
Scott's timing was quite perfect. The stroll down memory lane had to turn a corner to the events after he had been knocked out, and that was when he needed to adjust the temperature so it was burning him again. Now that the trauma was over with, he could reward himself with the highlights of the weeks that had followed. Of course it wasn't all cosy at first.

An explosion. That was all Scott saw at first. Then he felt the shockwave pull him backwards, and keep pulling, for miles and miles, at the speed of light. But the jet was still keeping up. It was so close now, the green and blue patched jet, the white flames propelling it. The turret barrel was fading into an intense scarlet. As he felt himself, saw himself, being pulled through space and time, his only focus was that the jet was getting closer, ready tom blast him out of reality. The single part of it that stuck out suddenly ejected, and he saw the cockpit. It was the torso flying it. Then a beam of black fire blasted out the barrel, ringing with the sound of a fear-saturated scream.
Suddenly he was in more control. He didn't want the flames so he made them go away. But his thoughts randomly faded between that jet and a sunset cliff, crawling out of a flipped over car. Was he awake? What was happening? All he knew was that it was chaos, nothing was stable, he just wanted everything to go blank.
One forever later, while incredibly drowsy, he managed to distinguish sleep from closed eyes. His thoughts were stable, time was back on track, his eyes were open. Another perfectly white too, but thankfully no portholes. He saw the sun slipping through the blinds, a fair white cracking past the slits of the shields. But the light wasn't harsh, it was somewhat serene. It gave him a small reason to wake up. What gave him a better reason was when Hardy walked in.

"Morning." he stated. It was when he entered he took full stock of his room. Not on a ship. Definitely a hospital room judging by the I.V. stuck in his arm. Somewhere foreign judging by the different language wrote on the equipment. He had several questions, but one took priority.
"Alison..."
"Is fine. Alive, stitched up, on drugs and has a splint. A few days and she'll be up and about."
"Cool..."he was feeling a lot better about that, but he was still overall depressingly fear-stricken, he still didn't know enough and what he did know he wish he could forget. Like his eye. "The others?"
"Shaken up but alive. Jack's leg wasn't cut too badly so he's fine, and physically, Carrie is fine. A little catatonic at times though..." Oh god. That was him. That was his fault. He subjected her to all that, all the screaming and the blood. How could he be so selfish? He had to go to her, he had to... He was instantly floored by the slashing of knives at his skin when he tried to sit up.
"Easy! Easy! Easy mate, you should NOT be up. You are on a LOT of morphine and you are SERIOUSLY injured... " he trailed off. Oh god. What was it? He "and...your eye's gone mate, the socket is... empty. I'm sorry." He was expecting this, but the news still stung him. He would have slumped in shock if he wasn't already completely flat on his back. All this ran very slowly through his mind though, his drowsiness still hadn't gone. Most likely the morphine was inducing it. More...

More answers. "Where are we?"
"Well, we're in France... don't you want to talk about what happened to your- "
"Priorities... tell me more things." He didn't want to talk about his eye now. He needed a distraction.
"Like what?" Hardy questioned. Like what indeed... several questions, where to start...
"Clooney. Dead?"
"Yes" he replied in monotone, but with a hint of regret. "Still, the way you were clasping at his throat, I didn't think he was walking out of there either way."
"I hated him for what he did to Alison, he was an incompetent bastard. I wanted him to crawl back in his mother's womb and unfertilize himself. Not burn to death."
"How long have I been out?"
"Around twenty eight hours. Granted some of that was down to the morphine and surgery, you were out for about half of that after Sheffield-"
"How long till I leave?"
"It'll be a week before you leave intensive care, to make sure your eye is safe, after all there was a small but potent cut to a vital blood vessel. You'll need a month to recover over all."
"A month?" Damn... He should've figured, but that was still a shock.
"Yeah, but at least your recovery will be relatively full. You should consider yourself lucky really, the floor made incisions into your skin but barely missed your insides, barely I might add."
"You think my eye will grow back?" he replied sarcastically. His socket sure as hell wasn't full.
"You'll be getting a glass eye, specifically a visual prosthetic... I know I can't make the shock go away but I want you to know, your life won't change dramatically. You'll get a glass eye - no I've said that, um..." this was strange. Hardy was, for the few minutes he knew him, a self proclaimed arsehole, a cheesy movie cliché dickhead who didn't care either way and didn't break his stride. What the hell was this? Why was he being... human? "You won't... be deformed noticeably, your life won't change as drastically as you think it will."
He asked bluntly "You're nice. Why?"
"What?" Hardy was clearly taken by this.
"You. Are. Being. Nice. For an arsehole you sure are being less arsey. You're all concerned and stuff. Could it be the stone cold solider has a heart?" he asked in mock curiosity.
"Well... my job is reliant on the safety-"
"Bullshit, that's a front. Why?" The silence could be cut with a damn knife. It lasted for several seconds before Hardy sighed and confessed.
"I don't make friends. The ones I have suffice."
"Why?"his tone remained just as hard. He was owed an explanation.
"Because... my best friend was killed in action. It destroyed me. I still haven't come back. And, stupidly cliché as this is, I don't want people getting close to me just to have them killed off. And you were essentially in a small coma, I didn't want responsibility or familiarity of someone so frail."
"You're right. That is stupid" he said, much more gently. He was understanding now. He empathized with him, he once thought that was a viable option after the crash. There was a small amount of laughter between them. He liked this, this new Hardy. He felt much more familiar, easier. "Look, your life's just gonna go down the shitter if you keep that up, take it from the half-orphan with anger issues. Besides, getting over the loss of an eye is sure gonna be easier with a friend."
"I guess" he replied with a slight smile. Scott slowly raised his arm for a handshake. It was effort so had better damn accept it. Fortunately he did, and a very firm grip. This did not surprise him, at the end of the day he was still a soldier. And, from what he saw with the bazooka, a badass one.
"There anything else you want to know?"
"Probably but hell if I remember. For now, I'm gonna face-plant a pillow and wait to see if I flat-line."
"Fair enough. You call the doctor if you want to talk to me."
"Will do. For the record I'm feeling a bit better now" he lied. He was slightly comforted but at the end of the day, he was in a warzone, had seen a bloody torso, lost an eye, saw his friend sliced up, watched a man die, and had experienced more pain than several years of his life combined. By rights he should have been completely broken in the inside. And he felt himself breaking. He needed time alone to deal with it. Like he dealt with his dad's death. But he was too drowsy to rip anything apart.

The next week ran very slowly and riddled with the same nightmare about the jet, but that didn't stop the boredom. French doctors visited him by the bed. Food was brought to him in the bed. Jack cracked up jokes with him near the bed. Alison hobbled over to the fucking bed. But the bed was absent of one character in particular. Carrie never showed. He stayed in bed all day, with his extensive injury. His friends comfort, Jacks joking and the psychologist that turned up every day helped relieve some of the hell he was going through. But without Carrie, his guilt over her only broadened and got worried sick. He begged to know why she wasn't visiting. His friends kept making excuses, she kept going to the city or the beach, she was talking to a hospital-prescribed therapist, or he was asleep when she visited. And he was sick of it. He kept flipping between anger at her and at himself. He had to see her. He had to see how she was, had to thank her, to say sorry to her, to see if she was o.k. Eventually he got his chance when she walked straight past his room.
He was turned over, trying looking out the window, just wanting to go outside. God he missed fresh air. And Carrie. He was sick of being so damn depressed. And sick of fantasizing. Out of spite he quickly threw himself the other way, refusing to look at the sunlight. He then caught a glimpse of a leather jacket and fiery red hair. His heart pounded, his brain went numb, his muscles froze, all over that one glimpse. What would he do? What could he say? These thoughts ran round his head only after calling out her name. But he got no response. He called out louder. Nothing. He needed her and he would be damned if she was going to get away. He hadn't been up because of his injuries to his torso, they left him in agony whenever he tried to get up. He was getting up for this.

The ship floor sliced him a thousand times over as he yanked himself away from the morphine and moved himself slowly. He shouted Carries name as constantly but she had disappeared. Where was she? The doctors and nurses were confused and alarmed by his shouting, then he heard the familiar voice of his doctor from behind him, shouting something in French. He figured it was directed at the staff considering they all began striding towards him. Carrie. They all surrounded him, talking at him in French and broken English. He tried to barge past them but they were not letting him through. He kept shouting her name again and again. He was getting angry now. Why couldn't they understand? Why wasn't she coming? And, after several moments of this, he snapped. "Move Frog!" He gave the pasty blond nurse in front of him a harsh uppercut, knocking him off his feet, then harshly shoved a tall brunette doctor out of balance and into a door. He tried to move but was being dragged down, grabbed by the other doctors. Just in time he saw the needle, a sedative. The doctor who approached him with it was met with a swift kick to the stomach. He was not backing down. They were trying to pull him away, just like the shockwaves in his dreams, and now he could fight them back...
"STOP!" a voice cried out desperately. It was Carrie, standing at the end of the corridor. He instantly did what he was told. He froze in his exact position. The whole ward froze in its position. It just watched the fire haired girl stand there solemnly, her shoulders slumped and her eyes red. They just stared at each other, and suddenly everything was gone. The pulling was done and the pain uncontrolled by the morphine retreated subtly. For the longest time he said nothing, the just said her name. In one solemn whisper. He couldn't begin to express what swirled in his stomach. Guilt, anger, gratitude, sadness. Then she just sniffed, trying to hold back her tears, and that shattered the wall between them. He strode over to her as the sniffing became more rapid. And halfway there she just broke down and ran into him. She ran into the scars but he didn't care, he had his friend back, he didn't care about anything else, not even about the needle being stuck in his neck.

The next few days got a both better and worse. Carrie had been avoiding Scott because she was terrified of the eye and now they were in an apologizing competition with each other. The nightmares continued, and now the cockpit was made up of the interior of a wrecked car, but he didn't have to deal with it alone. He was still reliant on morphine but at least he could walk around, and he was out of the intensive care ward now that he wasn't in any danger.
But with all the positives and the negatives, one thing didn't balance out. He apologized to the staff, he felt guilty over what he did, but while several understood, the man-nurse was still pissed and had got the police involved. With the refugee camps being sorted for the evacuees and general havoc around the packed up city, Scott's case didn't take much priority since he had calmed down, but he knew there would be consequences. He was fairly worried, but not because of consequences. Because Hardy said "don't worry about it". Jack mentioned he had something planned back on the ship, and Scott had the feeling at the pit of his stomach that it was about to play out. The last time he dealt with an issue it involved punching him just above the temple and using a rocket launcher inside a ship. He reflected on his father's death, the anger that horrific experience induced, and how it got him into those fights. He asked himself why anger was how he dealt with reactions. He wondered if he was broke inside, why trauma didn't sedate his spirit, but woke a sabre fanged wolf. And now he had mauled the hand that fed him antibiotics. Not just that, he had fucked with the plans Hardy had made. Though he wasn't sure he was going to like them. Then Hardy came in and confirmed that.

Scott and Carrie were waiting in the hall, pretending to be waiting for someone to come out of the toilet. This was the instruction Hardy gave Scott, and Carrie decided to stay with him, with a good explanation. Scott would have preferred none. He couldn't believe that this, of all possible plots and schemes, this was the bloody plan. It was a mistake. A break out was an accident waiting to happen.
"How well are you feeling?" Hardy had quizzed pretty urgently.
"Fucking wonderful" Scott replied sarcastically.
"Fantastic, coz we're getting out of here."
"Wait, what?"
"We were never staying in France, too likely to be attacked. We're heading to a safe zone down south. I got us a ride on a ship to Brazil. Get up, stand by the toilet door, wait for the signal and head out. It'll probably be a bunch of alarms. Now go" he said before hurriedly striding off. Scott stuttered out some words but in all the confusion of this suddenness didn't form a proper question. So there he was, waiting for some signal, no idea what it was. Then he heard the explosion. Alarms went off all at once. Scott froze. Carrie dragged him along. Oh god, oh god, what had Hardy done? They followed all the scared and confused people outside. And outside, parked on the pavement, was a jeep with Hardy, Jack and Alison inside. "Oxygen tanks are surprisingly unreliable." What he had done? The man who saved him just took down a hospital wall. "Calm down, no-one was hurt. Now get in". Scott did as he was told, but only out of fear. He was going to Brazil with a madman.