Milli-Verse: Nightmare

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 03:54:56 GMT

[ooc: BIG OLE WARNING OF DOOM ON THIS.
TRIGGER WARNING FOR GRAPHIC PHYSICAL CHILD ABUSE.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.]

Please, please don’t ever call me a hero. Heroes don’t fear pain; they’re molded, tempered and honed by it.

“It was me!” Young Michael, barely an adolescent, stands in between his parents – staring his father straight in the eyes even as the hand that had just split mother’s lip is directed toward him. It’s early enough that he’s still drunk from the night before, still reeking of whiskey and beer.

The cops are gone now, they’d let Madeline off with a warning for shoplifting since the owners refused to press charges, but in the process they woke Frank up from his Sunday morning sleeping it off. Michael wishes they’d have stayed – that they had noticed the way his mother flinched and tried to hold back tears when she heard him tell the police he’d take care of the problem. Never mind that he would have actually done it if he’d known what they needed – and probably gotten away with it. Never mind that it was aspirin to bring down his little brother’s fever and some food because they were broke again when his father’s paycheck didn’t make it past the bar.

“I was stealing; she told them it was her so that I wouldn’t get in trouble.” Michael stands his ground even when a slap across the face closes his wild eyes. He can still hear the sound of leather clearing denim belt loops.

“Michael, no…” Madeline gasps, barely whisper that nobody hears above the hard and fast rain of blows from the belt.

Thighs, stomach, back – always places nobody bothers to look until a kid shows up with one too many black eyes to write off as ‘boys being boys’. Places Michael’s used to being hit. “Damn it Frank, that’s enough!” his mother’s voice cracks and he can hear her light a cigarette to cover the fact that she’s crying – a world away he can imagine Nate curled up in the closet doing whatever he can to block out the noise and pretend that nothing’s happening

“You’re next,” he growls.

“It’s your fault,” Michael yells, he knows he has to do something to draw the attention back to himself – he can handle it. “If you could pull your head out of the bottle long enough to think for two seconds you’d know that.” He opens his eyes only a second – just long enough to see buckle coming for his face. He’s aware of the strike, the yellow and red star of pain, and then wetness on his face as his mother screams at Frank to leave. The door slams and as Madeline’s smoke comes closer and her fingers tug at his clothes to check his bruises.

Something soft is pressed against his face and his mother sighs; “I… I can’t take you to the hospital, honey. Not like this. Here…” She blots at the cut on his face, ruining her best white washcloth in the process; “look at me, Michael.”

Forcing his eyes, he realizes the wetness is blood and it’s not as close to his eye as he knows his mother fears – but it’s deep and it hurts worse than anything else. “I’m fine,” he whimpers, the first big tears finally allowed to roll down his cheeks when he hears the thunder of the Charger blowing down the driveway.

After a long, quiet moment of staring at each other he knows that his mother’s breaking. She thinks he’s stupid for taking the beating, for forcing himself between them. “He’s not a bad man,” Madeline swallows hard, her mascara running dark lines into her tearstained foundation; “he’s only like this…”

“When he’s drinking,” the boy’s voice is barely a whisper and as she leads him to the bathroom to clean him up and teach him how to make a couple stitches with rubbing alcohol and fishing line. In the mirror, he can see Nate lingering in the doorway and watching him – confused, barely old enough to understand what’s going on and desperately pretending the lie they’re going to tell the school is truth. Michael was in a fight with a bigger boy, yes, he’s fine.

Spies are terrified of pain; their demons haunt them just as much as anyone else despite having many more of them. They’re just good at hiding it.

A very adult Michael wakes up shuddering and sweating, cursing at the darkness in a world so far from his own it’s the fucking end of the universe. It takes a long run to the bathroom (thanks to the anti-radiation drugs Ellen had pumped into him) to stop shaking enough that he can hold the almost empty bottle of whiskey still lingering in his room from his last visit from Emma.

Choking back the memory, the very real and very terrifying memory that only opens the floodgates of the last few weeks, he pours out the last double and stares at it in the dark room.

Back on Gunsmoke, he’d held a gun to a little girl’s head. He’d shot a man without even feeling it. There had to have been another way – he could have just knocked him out, tied him up with his buddies. Even if he did shoot Wolfwood, the preacher was fine. He didn’t have to put rounds in Pierre’s chest. Even if it was just the gut decision in the heat of the moment, the guilt still weighs heavily on him.

He laughs bitterly and picks up the heavy glass – rolling it in his hands as the limited light catches the amber liquid. His back still aches from the shard of shrapnel from the Wasteland, the circular scar from Paco’s ring is still obvious on the back of his head, and when he takes a deep breath he can feel the tingle of burned lung tissue from New York that’ll never let him breathe the same. Every time he runs further away from what’s waiting for him in Miami, he learns more and lets the pain shape him even further.

When he looks in the mirror and sees the scar he’ll bear the rest of his life he swears he can still feel the strike and knows that he’s not his father. Still, he clings to his drink – whiskey’s not the enemy, it’s a simple thing. A drink, a way to numb the pain – to forget the look of terror on the little girl’s face as he shoved his 9mm against her head with his finger on the trigger.

He takes a long sip, swallowing hard as the whiskey flushes his cheeks and burns his throat until he clears more than half the glass. He knows if he drinks the rest of it, maybe he’ll be able to sleep tonight. And maybe if he gets another bottle he won’t dream about something just as bad – Chechnya, St. Petersburg, Dublin, Fiona telling him she’s walking away, his mother held at gunpoint by people after him, a bomb in front of a store filled with civilians going off while he and William fought an assassin simply to get his attention.

Michael lets out a ragged breath and grips the neck of the empty bottle – room service is damn good at Milliways and he knows when he goes to pour again it’ll be full with the same cheap whiskey that he’s clinging to like a man desperate to hide his demons. The thought’s enough to curl his fingers tight around the glass.

With a loud, angry growl, the heavy bottle shatters against the corner in a spray of heavy glass and whiskey.

“I’m not a bad man.”

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Michael Westen

Milli-Verse: Nightmare