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The world is different, after.
Or maybe it’s exactly the same.
There’s no rhyme or sense or reason to after, and maybe there never was, but he misses the pretense of it all the same.
(before etain and the screaming and the way her blood should have pooled around her, a cut that deep, but it didn’t, but ennen’s blood was everywhere and how did he not hear the shot before it happened, deaf like the way there was blood on his fists and he couldn’t hear the word “son” between him and the breaking bones and his white hot rage)
After is a confusing place to stand, either way. He isn’t sure if it warped the world around him, or if he’s just finally buckled under the reality everyone else has seen all along.
Sometimes he wants to ask, but Niner already looks at him -the squad looks at him- with a hesitation that sets his teeth on edge, that makes him want snarl and poke at the bruise until one of them snaps back at him and he’s too angry to feel afraid.
(sometimes he misses the old terror, because at least that terror made sense, when there were lines and expectations and cold white walls and colder eyes, but he knew what was expected of him. before he was a person he knew who was dangerous, and who was safe, no, there was never any safe, but he knew who to trust, he had thought, even if those people could be counted on one hand.)
In after, he jumps at shadows. There are knives waiting in every single one, he knows. The shadow of an Imperial Star Destroyer looming above Keldabe. The late evening shadow of a familiar bottle of tihaar.
(he is standing on his homeworld for the first time, sobbing into his dead wife’s shoulder, shaking so badly he’s afraid to take their son from her frail arms, the shrill cries of buir getting louder and louder in his ears, but for an instant he looks up, sees familiar golden armor except it’s a stranger smiling through the old man’s tears, except darman flinches with the impulse to reach for his knife, why does he want his knife, how could he want that)
Nothing makes sense in the after, but when Kal promises over his late night drink that Darman is safe, that they are all safe, Darman has to look away before he meets the mournful smile with bared teeth. Something about the weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder catches in his throat, a trapped feeling like sterile white walls and screams rattling in a muted buyce.
Darman figures something has to be wrong with him. Kal is the man who raised him.
Something is wrong with Darman after. There has to be. There has to be.
The alternative is too hard to bear.