Work Text:
December 1, 1918
David has a dream each time he falls asleep, in which he re-experiences everything completely. It starts like this.
“Bite down.” An indistinct voice instructs, and he obeys, jaw tensing under the pressure. He feels the sting of the rough fabric against the roof of his mouth, blood rising up his throat that tastes like copper on his tongue. There’s a cacophony of voices and gunfire that seems to ebb into nothingness when he finally manages to settle his gaze on the corpsman. What was once searing pain has now become something he doesn’t know the word for, like a legion of ants crawling beneath his skin. The wound is numb. That, he knows for sure. Which isn’t good, or maybe it is.
It feels like a part of him has gone missing. Like his ankle had been deftly removed.
The corpsman rummages through his supplies. David’s vision focuses in and out, and relief floods his body upon noticing the morphine in the man’s hand.
“Please,” he forces out, voice uncharacteristically weak. He trails off before he can even remember what to say. But it doesn’t seem to matter, his eyelids feel like weights and for a moment he wonders how much blood he had lost. He waits for a response from the corpsman, who lifts his arm and rolls his sleeve up.
“We’ll get you out of here.” He hears the man say, but he isn’t sure if he’s imagining it.
What he knows is true, is that it follows with:
“We just need to find the vein.”
The needle pokes at his skin. Not entering; not yet. Everything feels eerily calm, and perhaps too real. There are roots and hardened dirt beneath him, dead grass and wildflowers. But he isn’t on the front lines. The last thing he had seen before the shot was a mangled corpse caught in bloody tendrils of barbed wire. The last thing he had thought was, that could have been me.
Morphine seizes his muscles, and the dream ends.
-
David didn’t quite know where the real world began, but he could hear the thrumming of the train tracks beneath him. The return home had felt like weeks passing, and there wasn’t much to see. This ultimately left him alone inside his own head, which had proven to be a miserable place. Still, he could walk now. Better, at least. And the promise of going home kept his spirits up, even though he knew they were inevitably going to sink once the joy would dissipate. He mostly kept himself busy watching the world through the window. Seeing which states had snow and which did not. Passing by cows and horses and abandoned farmhouses forgotten by time.
But there was an unrest growing in the hollows of his stomach whenever he closed his eyes. At first he thought he hadn’t shaken off the seasickness from the boat. It was more than that, though, something that opened up a part of his mind he didn’t know existed. He saw many things again, unpleasant and terrifying, but he felt it too. In his eardrums and his spine. The way his hands would shake when a bullet flew past a little too close.
Most of the time, it would be the corpsman and the morphine. He’d remember what it felt like when his ankle seemed to disappear from him.
Sometimes, it was the smell of gas, the way his chest would tighten and his throat would burn.
There were other things that meshed into each other. Watching the life leave the eyes of his friend, until they were nothing but two black holes that swallowed him whole. Seeing the blood that covered his bayonet. Thinking of his father, then being angry with himself for thinking of his father. There wasn’t much else to think about. He really wasn’t leaving anyone else behind. It was quiet back home, a corpse of a house with peeling wallpaper and a barren yard. The harsh nature of the battlefield was certainly far from familiar. He wasn’t expecting less, but he also wasn’t expecting to return alive. Which was funny, because he didn’t feel alive. Sitting on the train was more like crawling home a skeleton than not. Or even still himself, but less than human.
The sun was sinking into the horizon when he looked back out the window. It almost seemed tangible. He could see it, the rays reflecting off of the glass, and he could almost feel it. The sunset, most evenings at war, meant to him that he might be okay. That he had made it another day, and he only had to do it again and again. But he didn’t really get to look at it until now. As nerve wracking as the ride was, the gentle shake of the train underfoot seemed to hide the tremors that had followed him home. They would come in waves, in all parts of his body and usually were no different than the way he would get shivers in his ribcage from freezing temperatures. It was often accompanied by the racing of his own heart for seemingly no reason, like a caged animal pacing in his chest.
Then, the dreams would follow.
David thought about what he would say to his father. If he were to say anything at all. In the end, he determined that the answer depended on the look on his father’s face when he opened the door. Would he be able to keep his limp discreet, he thought, or risk being seen as weak? Or perhaps surviving made him enough of a hero to be called strong. But he couldn’t imagine Max’s lips forming that word if he tried. Maybe, things changed in his absence. Maybe he’d look up at Max and see his father rather than a ghost, or he’d kindly call him his son.
The word sounded euphonic.
A shift underneath his seat startled him, and the train seemed to slow. His stupor vanished and he remembered that he was not home yet, and the sunset was right there. But the movement of the train reminded him that he would be stepping off soon. He took one more glance at the sky, and thought of the sun setting over France and the sound of bodies dropping.
-
The house looked the same from the outside, but the grass seemed greener. Max had probably taken better care of the place. Despite his tendency to be uptight, Max had never really done much to take care of the home. There was not much he could afford to do. So, all of his class came from his clothing, and the way he held himself. David wondered if his father would be unrecognizable the moment he entered the house. What would be worse, he thought, was the possibility that Max was at work. The last thing David wanted was to be alone in that house. But at the same time, the last thing he wanted was to be alone with his father.
His fist tightened around his valise, and he took a step towards the door anyway.
The doorknob felt cool in his free hand. Cold enough to burn if he held on any longer. The door creaked open, the sound causing tension to shoot through his spine and into his shoulders. He took a breath and forced it down, stepping inside and closing the door behind him.
It looked the same on the inside too. Time was beginning to feel more like a farce of reality than what he knew before. The only thing that seemed to change was himself while everything else around him stood delicately still.
David set his valise down near the door, and he felt weightless. The silence of the room settled into his bones and he could only hear the sound of his own breath, and rapidly approaching footsteps.
Max appeared around the corner with urgency, abruptly stopping in his tracks the moment David came into view. David’s eyes narrowed and his breath hitched, catching in his throat; now there was no sound.
Whatever expression Max was wearing before seemed to falter altogether. It looked more like utter devastation washing over his features. His jaw hung slightly open, eyes wide and focused.
The many things David had considered saying to his father didn’t make it past his lips. He swallowed it down, waiting for Max to speak first. Looking at his father sent a wave of anger through his body. His stomach twisted, and Max’s jaw set.
“I didn’t think you’d come back.”
The silence that followed felt suffocating.
David watched his father closely, but Max didn’t seem to have any desire of getting closer to him. So, he took a step forward himself.
“Well,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Here I am.”
Max nodded, and David’s anger resurfaced.
“Don’t leave that on the floor.” Max gestured to the valise, expression hardening. David scowled and lazily picked the valise up, setting it on the table instead. Max let out a sigh and grabbed it, taking it in the direction of David’s room and seemingly placing it there on the bed before returning. His arms crossed over his chest and he faced David from the other side of the table.
“Hello, David.” He said gently, clearly trying to prompt David into a formal greeting, which he pointedly did not return. “Welcome home.”
“Thanks.” He murmured in response. Of course Max had to turn his return from months at war into a lesson.
“Would you like something to eat?”
David looked up expectantly.
Max made eye contact. “Help yourself.”
Bastard.
“No thank you.” David said sharply, removing his glare from his father and turning to look at the walls around him, taking everything in. It had felt like ages since he’d seen it. Before leaving, he tried to memorize everything. It could never seem to elude him. He could hear Max snort behind him.
“Do not take that tone with me.” Max snapped.
David turned to face him again. He had forgotten how to get under his father’s skin, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try. “Does that bother you?”
“Yes, entirely.” Max’s arms returned to his sides, fists clenching. “Is this truly all you have to say to me, David?”
It felt strange to hear his own name. His identity had been lieutenant for so long.
Max wasted a few seconds of silence on a lack of response from David before continuing:
“I figured you would know better now. They couldn’t beat the bohemian out of you?”
David bit his tongue, and Max kept going.
“Are you following me, son?”
Abruptly, David pushed past his father, aimlessly wandering into the nearest room. Wherever Max wasn’t. He slammed the door, which drowned out a faint and incoherent remark from his father, and turned around to find himself in Max’s study. Maybe he hadn’t memorized the house after all.
It was a tiny room. More like a cage than anything. The sound of the door slamming made his heart beat a little faster, which he didn’t notice at first. He pushed a chair in front of the door, hoping it would barricade it well enough for the effort to at least be too much for Max. After a few moments, there was an unfamiliar quiet.
David skulked behind the desk where the chair had been, eyes locked on the clutter. It was unlike Max to have his desk in such disarray. There were papers upon papers, a bit of spilled ink and an old paperweight in need of replacement. There were paintings on the wall. There always had been; many of them were wild horses and noble men. There was one lithograph of Max that he had spent lots of money on. Not a single trace of his son in the house.
There was one note on the desk, David noticed, that seemed uncharacteristically informal for his father. Probably a letter gone unsent. Max was never great with communication.
David picked up the note. It looked weeks, maybe months old. A lot of things on the desk looked to be collecting dust. It was addressed to no one in particular, but his breath nearly stopped when he read it.
Please give this to my son:
I did not think you would do this. I could never find the shape of a killer in you. I had thought you would oppose the idea of it, but the truth is, war is necessary. Perhaps you are finally making a difference. You are my son, hero or not.
Rest well. Remember to eat. If you’re surrounded, let them get you. It is better to control your fate than to go slowly.
Be good.
Your father.
The note felt heavier in his hands now. He wanted to crumple it in his fist and find a new home. A tremor ran through him and he reflexively dropped the paper back onto the desk. His ankle ached. His breath was too quick. He imagined himself dying slow, and briefly remembered the way his muscles jerked when injected with morphine.
The silence felt loud. Like the battlefield.
There was a knock at the door. When David made no attempt to respond, the knob turned a couple of times as Max tried to force the door open. Just like David knew he would, his father gave up.
“I wish you would visit with me, David.” He heard his father say through the door.
David kept his mouth shut and pushed his back against the wall. He didn’t believe in prayer, and so he wished for the strength to walk out the door. To accept his place beside his father or away from him. The only solace he could find in this house was in silence, so he tried to breathe quietly.
But the words on that paper were running through his head.
Be good.
Be good. Of course.
Now there were not just images, but words written by his father etched on the walls of his mind.