things fall apart; the center cannot hold

Religion had always been a huge part of Vanessa’s life. It had been the path that led her towards other people, to help them without question. Perhaps that was also something inherent in her, but going to church had given her some kind of purpose to put it towards. Being good was tiring. She wouldn’t be the first to say it, but she’d admit if she was pressed to. It wasn’t that she wished to be bad, nothing of the sort. But giving your all to other people wasn’t an easy task, it was draining and it could be exhausting at times. And in those times she prayed. Sometimes she prayed for the strength to continue on and other times she just simply prayed to give herself a moment of solace. Vanessa didn’t need the Lord to answer, so many needing an affirming voice to help them along. What she needed was someone to put her intentions towards, to know that twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week there was an ear waiting for her to speak. 

Ma’am. It had been a little while since she’d heard that, a smile giving away how pleased she was by such wonderful manners. “Well, I can’t do anything but help someone so polite.” Vanessa dried her hands and checked on the rags she’d folded, they’d dry soon enough. “People to get back to, is that right? Sounds like I’m in the midst of a busy woman.” Standoffish. That was what the body language and the aura told her. Why? She wasn’t sure, but Vanessa rarely did care for the why. The why was always secondary to the actual person standing in front of her. She didn’t need to assume anything about them, in time they’d reveal what they wished to. Patience was a virtue that Vanessa had been blessed with. She saw no urgency in needing to dig into other people, to exhume them, it would always come in time; the locked away skeletons spoke to Vanessa, knowing she’d listen. “I’ll walk you out, this place can be a little bit of maze when it wants to be.” The leader rose, the bright smile on her lips letting his young woman know that there was no option available to just being told directions.  As kind, as compassionate and as patient as she was, over the years Vanessa had learned that those things did not mean weak or submissive. She was gentle, but it never cost her her confidence or her assertive nature. Soft spoken, a stern fisted. “What’s your name, pumpkin?”

When Nik was just a kid, she’d gone to visit her dad’s sister in New Orleans. Dorothy was a smart woman, studying social work at Tulane University, but sometimes Nik’s dad would say to her mom or his other sister ( when he thought there was no one around to hear ) that Dorothy Charles thought she was ‘too good’ for this family anymore. If it were true, Nik hadn’t noticed. Aunt Dorothy had taken young Nik to the most magical places--tourist traps she’d called them, but she’d taken Nik anyway. Places like Preservation Hall, where the summer heat and jazz made Nik weak in the knees. They had coffee and beignets at Cafe Du Monde. Explored the MIssissippi Delta on the Natchez. Aunt Dorothy was a modern woman, but she was still a child of God at heart. When Sunday came and it was time for the family to leave, but Dorothy had chosen church over farewells at the airport, Freddie Charles had HAD it. Nik had cried, wanting to go with Aunt Dorothy and Freddie had held her hand firmly on the way to the cab--the hardest he’d ever been in Nik’s memory. After that, church and Dorothy were rarely mentioned in the Charles’ home, with the exception of the holidays. And that’s where Nik’s interest in religion had died off too, with the exception ( maybe sometimes ) of the holidays.

Nik cracked a grin at the polite comment. This woman reminded her of her Aunt Dorothy in that kind of way. It was a recognition so slight, it didn’t bother bubbling into consciousness, but there was a part of her that felt at ease even if it were for reasons she couldn’t quite sink her TEETH into. Instead they found her lower lip as it formed a frown--a tell that gave her lying away, just as sure as her eyebrows that knitted along with it. Nik shifted her weight over the other leg and crossed her arms thoughtfully. “Not--” She began. Not busy, she almost let slip. If she’d had people, she’d be busy, so she left the sentence unfinished as the unspoken word hung in the air. “I’d appreciate it, ma’am. Thank you.” The reluctance wasn’t far from her voice as she stuck her balled fists in the pockets of her army green jacket. “Nik.” She replied, walking at the woman’s pace. After a second, she felt the uncomfortable nagging sensation of being polite. “Nikita Charles. Pleasure to meet you.” She kept her eyes forward, readjusted her hand in her pockets and kept walking. Eye contact and a name was more intimacy that she thought she could handle just yet.

the sound of the siren —– his  chest TIGHTENED. ❝ what the fuck ?? ❞ a hand lay flat atop his chest. his fingers gathered the fabric of his shirt, he grunted. another arm rested on the frame of the door before he balanced his weight against it ENTIRELY. the twinge in his chest only grew as his breath became rapid. he fell to one knee and while he heard footsteps APPROACH he reached for his gun, aiming it in the direction of the sound. with a scattered breath he spoke, ❝ honestly, if you’re alive, don’t make me shoot this gun. i’ve had a very STRESSFUL day and this, this is just rude. ❞

The alarm sounds make her tense, prepared. Unlike the others, she doesn’t forget who she is when predators circle her camp--their calls drawing the dead to the source of her growing migraine. No, Nikita Charles is ALIVE under the threat of death ( it’s the only time she knows how to be, she has that much in common with the shambling, blind dead ). “I’m sorry.” Sour words spilled TERSE from a sour mouth. It’s hard to remember sometimes that other people have a right to pain. Nik’s been deep into solitude and an introspective sort of trauma that she forgets what she’s about to say works both ways. A year in a ‘safety’ room does that to a soldier. “Didn’t realize you had the goddamn copyright to stress. My bad.” The rain is something she’s used to, but it seems out of place to her in a place like Wyoming, which seems more like sun and snow than nature baptising the landscape with life. “I can GO though. Leave you to figure out this--” Her hand leaves the barrel of her rifle to gesture at him. “--Whatever’s going on with you--solo.”

                     a frown forms ; a perfect crease between her brows as she stares incredulously, her hand dropping from her chest to mirror the other’s stance, arms folded over her chest. “ don’t tell me what the fuck to do, i don’t give a damn what you are. “ maybe she should, but really ; what does elena know ? nothing, and she doesn’t want to either. “ and i’m not a fucking princess. “

@seclusicn

Leading a camp was a shock to his system. He had only been in control of himself for so long, so leading a large group of people was hard to get use to again. He had taken to helping out each cluster of workers — carers, patrollers, traders, healers — to familiarize himself with the needs and daily struggles of the members of the camp. Today was his turn with the patrollers, the group he felt himself fitting into the easiest, so he was on a loop route around Sloan Lake.

Nate unsheathed his Kabar at the sight of a kneeling figure near the edge of the lake. He wasn’t sure if it was a rotter or a human, and as he was alone — he would rather be on the safe side. “Hey, what are you doing here?”

No matter how many times she’d looked down and seen blood freckling her brown skin ( like the mist coming off the Pacific Ocean at the rocky Oregon coast; a gentle spattering of blood that carried the weight of tangible memories ) Nik had never grown used to it. Sweat beaded on her upper lip and trickled to the small of her back from between her shoulderblades. The day was not remarkably hot, but the weight of the pack combined with the mileage she’d put on over the course of the day had taken its toll. 

The cool water of the lake was baptismal in its ability to refresh and renew her. Cupped hands brought the cleansing water over her face and Nik closed her eyes, exhaling soft and slow through her nostrils as it swept away the grime and beads of sweat. Footsteps broke the harmonious reverie of the small oasis and she turned sharply, reaching for the strap of her rifle across her shoulder as eyes searched for the intent of the speaker as if it were worn plainly across a face she could not quite make out from the distance. “Washing my damn hands.” The words came slow and cautious, her tone cut with an edge of incredulous annoyance. “You own this lake or just greedy about hand hygiene?”

     BROTHERHOOD: it was something the Marines, hell, every branch of the military promised young boys like him. They promised him a family, more brothers ( and sisters ) than he could count. An instantaneous bound that was more binding than BLOOD. And he did find it, that family he was promised. Eight long years, he counted on these men, entrusted his life to them and them to him. Robert had to lay his LIFE in their hands, allow them to be him, become a multi-headed beast that formed into one body. They worked as a unit, took care of each other and looked out for each other. That wasn’t to say there weren’t people he didn’t like in the corps, fights broke out constantly between men stuck in humvees and make-shift tent barracks for countless days, but when it came down to it, all the bullshit was put aside when their lives were in danger — and their lives were always in DANGER.

     After the war, though? When they put their fatigues into boxes in the attic, pushed their dress blues into the back of their closets, and slept in the same place every night? There were hints of this family still left, in the corners of VFWs or passing each other at VAs, but these families were filled with men all scattered across the country. They came back from war, promising to write each other like kids returning home from summer camp, only to DISAPPEAR from his life like childhood summer camp buddies always seemed to do. Even when he was close to these brethren, as close to them as he was to her, they all seemed to fade away eventually, some quickly and others slowly. The bi-yearly weekend visits turned into monthly catch-up calls turned into ‘ happy birthday ’ Facebook messages turned into reunion barbecues every five years — not that time allowed these barbecues to happen for him yet, only a year away from his first — that turned into an obituary newspaper clipping sent by the deceased’s wife. Some of these brothers adapted to civilian life and fell back into a normal life, like they didn’t spend their prime years killing for Uncle Sam’s hand, while some never truly left Umm Qasr. ( Bobby didn’t want to think about which category he belonged to. )

     The name sounded almost foreign to him, like a language he never heard before. She was NIK to him. Charles, or Doc, if anything. Hearing her full first name felt wrong, it didn’t belong to the GHOST of a blood-spattered woman standing among DIRT and shell casings. It was too formal, like if he heard her call him Robert–or worse, Willard. The second he heard the word ‘ Gunny ’ spill out of her mouth, though, she was back to the eighteen year old girl too young for WAR and he was back to the twenty one year old man too old to be SCARED.  ❝  Well excuse tha’ fuck outta me, thought ya’ might’a been skinned alive and some stranger was out here in the middle of shit-fuck nowhere wearin’ yer mug.  ❞  The explanation seemed to make more sense than actually having Nikita fuckin’ Charles right in front of him, living and breathing and not just some walking memory coming to haunt him in corporeal form.

The Charles house hadn’t been full most days when Nik was coming up. Freddie and Ethel had given up hope on having a child years before she had forced her way into their life. It had been a difficult pregnancy--hard won, hard fought. Morning sickness, preeclampsia, cholestasis, and the longest labor Ethel could’ve been forced to imagine. By the time baby Nikita was brought home, she was the youngest Charles family addition by nearly ten years. By the time she was ready for playdates and sleepovers, her cousins were interested in an entirely different manner of dates and late nights. Her inactivity branded her as annoying. Being one of the only black girls in a twenty-five mile radius? Meant less opportunities for friends. It didn’t bother her any--it’s hard to miss out when you don’t know how good things can be--but a quiet, empty room to sleep in every night could get awful lonely when the shapes and shadows crept and crawled from closet doorways and beneath wooden bed frames.

When Nik Charles hit boot camp, it wasn’t the activity that was hard on her. She could hang with the strenuous workouts and the yelling. None of that bothered her any. It was the early bedtimes, the bunkbeds, the lack of PRIVACY or solutide that she had not only grown accustomed to, but that had been slathered across her skin like the mud she’d crawled through. The constant noise and crowd was smothering--spread across her closed eyes and nostrils in thick layers of muttering, talking, snoring and shifting in cots that were made with precision in the early hours of the morning. It made young Nik wonder what the fuck she’d signed up for. 

That was the thing of it all. All that solidarity--eating, sleeping, shitting, dying together--it dried and flaked off one day. It became her OXYGEN and when it was gone--stripped away like her clothes and her sanity that night she was brought to the hospital--she realized that her biggest comfort before the corps was a bigger hell than Iraq had ever promised her. Even the nightmare she’d stormed out into had been a sweeter freedom than that place. Seeing Bobby now, after all these horrible fucking years, felt like she could finally breathe again. It was just one lung of the pair, it felt like, but hell she was breathing. 

“You thought some run of the mill Texas Chainsaw backwoods Wyoming sonofabitch could take me?” Nik shot back at him with a grin. “That because I’m a girl or because I’m a corpsman?” Dropping her pack and slinging her rifle over her shoulder, she thought that his rough face was a sight for sore eyes ( she might’ve even cried had she not had the tar kicked out of her tear ducts long ago ), and headed over to him to clap a hand across his back. “You know I’ve been saving a cigar for a special occasion. I sure as hell can’t think of a better one than thanking the devil for not taking your sorry ass years ago.” Nik smirked, eyebrows raised in playful challenge, before her voice and features dropped slightly. “How the hell are ya?” Solemn, genuine--some things are hard to let yourself be.