#lt. bitters

Felix tells you what happened. Not you, not exclusively you, but he tells you. You don’t believe him at first. He denied it, “No, fuck,” you mutter under your breath. You want to protest, you want to yell and scream and punch Felix in the face because he couldn’t save them. He didn’t get there in time to save them. Or at least to try. 

Kimball walks off, and Felix stands completely still, “Fuck,” you mutter under your breath, and stamp your feet, your hands clenching into fists. “Fuck,” your voice was getting louder, as Palomo moves off to the side, head in his hands, you saw Jensen and Smith hugging each other out of the corner of your eye. You can hear the shallow breathing, and the soft whimpers from Jensen. “Fucking dammit, fuck.”

You storm off, leaving the others to themselves. You storm off and mutter insults under your breath, each of them getting louder and louder until you reach your room (the one you share with the rest of your team – oh fuck, your team) and you reach a wall (you remember Grif leaning against that wall, yelling at you to get up).

You reach the wall and clench your teeth, “FUCK!” you scream, slamming your fist into the metal. You keep it there, resting your entire body weight on it.  You keep it there, letting your entire arm throb in pain. You keep it there, breathing deeply, before screaming once again. You know there are people looking at you – this sort of thing never goes unnoticed.

You know your knees are about to give out, so you let them, your fist still lodged into the wall. You allow yourself to sink to the ground and let out a heaving sob. You try to stop yourself from getting so fucking emotional about so fucking stupid. But you can’t stop yourself. You are utterly useless and you can’t do a fucking thing about it. You give a heaving sob and hang your head, “Fuck…" 

You can’t bring him back – you can’t bring any of them back – and you fucking hate yourself for doing this. And the worst part is, you called it. You fucking called it and you hated being fucking right. Just this once, you hated being right.

“…Bitters?” you hear the door open, and as you look up you see a fucking yellow stripe. You rip off your helmet and lodge it at Matthew’s head, and he quickly shuts the door. You take a breath.