#scrimpswrites

"1983. I went home to Massachusetts after the frozen hell we all faced. What time I had spent there felt exponentially greater than what it actually was. I needed something to do. My hands felt too empty. I might have taken up my old job if they had let me, but the bastards turned me away. Mental counseling. I was, supposedly, a fuckin’ nutjob who thought he saw shit in the snow. In their eyes, I was a rogue pilot who destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars of scientific equipment, eviscerated the base. I’m ‘lucky’ they dropped the charges on the basis of my mental instability, apparently. Lucky my ass. I almost lost my life- I did lose my crew. Every fuckin’ one of ‘em. Except Childs. He didn’t freeze to death, like we thought we both would. They thought I killed them, my crew. On purpose or not, I was held responsible for their deaths. Everyone thought it, and nobody said it. My superiors told me they understood I went through some sort of ‘traumatic experience’ that altered my perception, that they understood that the crew perished ‘unfortunately’. But I could see it in their eyes. They didn’t want to look at me the same, and when they sent my ass back to the real world they treated me the way they did the vets they didn’t give a shit about. I never killed any of them, but I sure as hell had to look them in the eyes when I killed whatever thing took them. The likeness was uncanny. Unforgettable."

New AO3 post just dropped for a ship no one asked for :3