thenewnormal | TFLN Continuations

thenewnormal

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From:

petit_loup

I know he’s not the same guy, and he doesn’t seem likely to try and kill me any time soon. Doesn’t make it less weird.

And? He misses you.

From:

thenewnormal

I guess I can understand that.
...wait, what?

From:

petit_loup

[She rereads that, realizes the way she said it might be confusing]

I meant, “why is Bass maybe coming a bad thing?” He misses you. Bass. Not Kyle.

From:

thenewnormal

No, I mean...he misses me?

From:

petit_loup

Yes. Of course he does.

From:

thenewnormal

You make that sound as if I should have realized. It's been a few years, Hayley.

From:

petit_loup

I didn’t expect you to know. I just didn’t think you’d be surprised, I guess. I think he had some realizations when he was hospitalized. But then you were deployed when he got out, and then he and Miles were sent wherever they were that they can’t talk about, and then you were back home.

Don’t tell him I said anything. I probably shouldn’t even know, but Miles has to analyze *everything* the last couple of years.

From:

thenewnormal

Hospitalized?

From:

petit_loup

You don’t know about that? You know their unit got partially hit with a suicide bomber in Afghanistan, right?

From:

thenewnormal

How bad was it?

[ And now he has to struggle to remember if he ever told Bass about the particular reason he's home or not. ]

From:

petit_loup

Physically, not near as bad as it could have been. The bomb was on a timer and went off before the kid got to them. Most of them were injured in some way, a couple seriously, but the bomber was the only death. Bass and Miles both had head injuries, and they were worried about nerve damage in Bass’s eye from shrapnel; Miles was unconscious for a couple of days, but they both recovered well enough to stay active duty.

The real damage was psychological; there was a second bomber, another kid, meant for the first responders. Only when he realized most of the guys were still moving, he came in. Bass saw him, near an unconscious Miles, and took the shot. He saved them, but it messed his head up more.

From:

thenewnormal

The worst damage you can get out there is psychological.

[ And he's taking into account death, because death is finite. Survivor's guilt is anything but. ]

Now I feel bad because I never knew that.

From:

petit_loup

I believe that.

[She’s been fighting a smaller, but just as vicious, war for seven years now, and there are a lot of ghosts who have her asking why and how she’s still standing.]

The military doctors fucked up. Gave him Ambien to help him sleep, without paying attention to the underlying issues it can make worse. I don’t know all the details, but Miles found him in the midst of some kind of psychotic episode, cutting into his arm. He almost bled out. So, they hospitalized him for a month or two.

From:

thenewnormal

Jesus. You'd think military doctors would know to be careful about things like that and actually read someone's medical history. Because it would have shown that there WAS history. How long ago was this?

[ Because while a part of him feels guilty that he wasn't there, he'd feel even more guilty if it was not long after they broke up. ]

From:

petit_loup

I think he and Miles have hidden any history of that sort, but even just the trauma he'd been through should have made them pick something else.

Two or three years at this point. I was still on the road, but I want to say it was 2016ish. Maybe a little over a year after we met? [Time is a little fuzzy for her, those five years she spent looking for a cure for her family.]

From:

thenewnormal

I'm betting it was Miles. Which makes him an idiot.

So a while after we split.

[ It's not relief he feels, not really, but at least he wasn't probably the cause of the spiral. He couldn't have done anything. ]

From:

petit_loup

It's Bass's history. He had to have a part in it, Alex. And I'm sure it was to keep him in the Marines. Which, honestly, he probably shouldn't be, but getting kicked out would maybe be worse.

I guess, yes. [It dawns on her what he might have been thinking.] Alex - you had nothing to do with it. Everything he saw...no one could have prevented it unless they were with him 24/7.

From:

thenewnormal

Believe me, I'm not saying that Bass is innocent. I'm just saying that it was likely to be Miles's idea. And a bad one because there are so many ways it could go wrong.

...I know. My head knows you're right. My heart wonders if I could have done something differently.

From:

petit_loup

Maybe. But only in response to Bass's upset. Trust me--he knows it backfired. Do you think he hasn't been beating himself up since he walked in and saw Bass there? It was his worst nightmare, coming true.

I don't know. Maybe you could've, if you two had still been together, with two of you to try and pull him back, or two of you to watch them. But that doesn't mean there's anything you should have done differently. And he's good now. Stable.