#seth lawrence

Precious memories begin to slip away for Terry Silver

Tw: Gore, blood, wartime stuff, ptsd stuff

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Life is such a fickle thing.

The birds have no issue with killing and consuming the bugs, the snake has no issue with consuming the bird, the hawk has no issue with slaughtering the snake. Such is the natural order of things. So, in theory with death being so common in the food chain, no one should bat an eye when a human dies, shouldn’t spare any distress, let alone tears. But that's why such things would only ever remain a theory.

So why, pray tell, was Terry Silver so incredibly horrified at this moment? Why could he not stop his limbs from shaking and his eyes going blank as the Vietcong soldier pulled the trigger, blowing blood and brain matter across the grass, the bits of bloodied skull that once made up his close friends head now decorating the grass like the ivory of a decoration he had broken long ago when he was nothing more than a toddler? If death was so natural, and war just another beast to conquer, why was he fully incapable of looking away from the corpse that lay a mere foot away from him now?

Blue eyes remained, unblinking on the bloodied mess on the jungle floor even as the soldier's jabbed their gun in between his shoulder blades, forcing him and his comrades to their feet, the image burning itself into his brain like a red-hot iron, forever scarring his psyche. He had always known that human life was fragile, he had always known that the wrong step, the wrong move, and it could snuff out your life. So why did he feel as if a piece of him remained on the ground with the broken remains of his friends as he was forced into captivity?

Those final few moments of Seth Lawrence's life would remain in Terry’s mind for the rest of his days, long after the war had ended and he and John had managed to return home. It remained in the nightmares that were so terrible, he would often wake in a cold sweat, feeling the need to break something just to feel some level of human again. It remained in the moments of quiet, where Terry had no one around except his tortured mind the sound of that gunshot would start to echo through his mind. Truthfully, it got to the point where he was finding himself to have moments where he would forget Ponytail’s face. It was never anything big. But sometimes. Sometimes when he tried to remember the good times that they had had before his friend’s final fate, something would be off. He’d remember his eye color wrong, blue-green eyes becoming purely green or even brown, his hair color being lighter or darker than it truly was, or even his smile being wrong. He knew it was wrong, and it drove him insane that he seemed to not be able to fully remember his friend’s face.

Furthermore, he wasted no time in commissioning a painting of him in order to keep him properly in his memories, enlisting the help of a few old photos from Kreese to make copies of them before they were returned to his former-captain. Terry had made sure that he had gotten the best for this little project too. He wanted it to be perfect. Unfortunately, perfection took time. In the year it had taken him to get the memorial painting, he had done his best to keep himself busy. He had kept busy with his work, of course he had. He had also set himself to coming up with the perfect area for this masterpiece, a plaque with his name, nickname and life, commissioned to be made out of a beautiful piece of sterling silver. Terry would make sure that this memorial would be fit for a king. Nothing less. And yet, despite his desperate attempts to remember him. In the time period it took for the painting to reach completion, he was still cursed to lose more little details of his friends. It was like a puzzle with a few missing pieces and no box. Until the only memory that he knew was certain to be complete, was that of Ponytail’s lifeless corpse, his head nothing more than a gory mess, a brain with a lifetime's worth of memories spattered on the jungle grass.

And what killed him the most. What absolutely destroyed him. Was that the body was more likely than not still there so many years later, now nothing more than a skeleton lying below the ground in the middle of a country that was not his own. When they had gotten back to their home, having a burial without a body for the man who had been so close to them. Hell. He still remembered Johnny having to help poor Laura and Johnny when the gunshots started to go off, it was too much on the blonde baby boy’s little ears. He remembered thinking that a burial without a body was nothing more than a show. A sham. He remembered that the nightmare he had had that night had been the worst of them all, resulting in many shattered valuable vases and glasses before he could finally calm himself down. Ever since that day he had more than set on the idea of keeping his memory alive. And now he often found himself failing even at that. Even after growing out his hair. Even after working so hard to hang onto those positive memories, now as he started to work on being sober, as he started slowly splitting away from Kreese and away from the Valley, anything to try to focus on the positive memories of their friends. Of them. Before they became the monsters they were today. He was failing at that task. And he hated himself for it.

Once the painting had finally arrived, he had wasted no time in getting it into the African blackwood frame and up onto the wall for its final resting place. Terry’s eyes traced over the piece, the blue-green eyes that always seemed to have some sense of mischief behind them, the ponytail, perfectly created as if to spite all those who told Seth to chop it off, the uniform, at first glance being perfectly up to code but still hiding a few imperfections here and there…it was technically perfect.  It was precisely what he had wanted. And yet…it still didn’t feel right. He leaned against the wall across from the painting, lips tightening slightly. He supposed all those memories and paintings, they could never compare to the real thing.

Now that was an idea.

Perhaps, Terry had finally found a way to free himself from the guilt of forgetting. Perhaps, by doing his long-deceased friend a favor it would ease his mind. Maybe he would finally be able to sleep easily without that moment replaying in his head. Perhaps the painting would be enough to remember him once he knew his body at rest.

Best way to describe Sammy’s relationship with his Aunt, Uncle and Two Cousins. (also they can go fuck off)

Aunt Jezebel and Uncle Seth- Emotionally abusive 

Hades (Cousin)- Verbally and Mentally Abusive 

Medea (Cousin)- Physically Abusive