@blackmarmba asked: &
When people laid hands on him, it usually wasn’t gentle. The touch surprised him, his shock evident in his raised eyebrows. He should’ve been gutted like a fish. Every scar was a reminder, a failure etched into his skin, and Jimmy had failed many times. “Hey,” the word came as a growl, a warning. He didn’t mean to sound so angry, he wasn’t angry at her. He brought the bottle down off the shelf, adjusted his shirt. Let it go, he thought. Some failures were best left forgotten, but what do you do when you can’t forget? He poured out two drinks, his silent apology for snapping at her. It wasn’t the pain he remembered, pain faded into background noise in those vivid memories. He moved to bring his glass to his lips, but he stopped midway, froze for a second as his mind wandered to that night. It wasn’t the pain he remembered, but rather the result of the pain. He remembered trying, he remembered faltering. He had to keep going, he had to keep moving, but his body gave out. Holding his wound, limping away from the corpse of the man who had tried to kill him, the corpse of a man he once called friend. Jimmy’s thousand yard stare vanished, he put the glass to his lips. He looked around his empty bar, “y’know -- this place, this club, it really used to be somethin’.” Despite his baby-face, his eyes were weary. How many of his friends had he put down? When would it all end? He found comfort in the nostalgia that he so easily sunk into. “Where did everyone go?”
