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skam it really said: the car is the protagonist of s5 like skamfr

#skam italia #skamit #skam france #WAR FLASHBACK

POV!

POV — something that’s already happened, retold from another character’s perspective

Retelling of a specific moment from this piece

Terry Rouse has never been a deep sleeper, even less since his wife had passed on a few years before. Only a month shy of their fiftieth wedding anniversary, too, and hadn't that been a kick while he was down?

They'd had a whole vacation planned down at the beach, and he'd gone ahead with it, sitting in a beach chair watching the waves with one of her sweaters in his hands, occasionally lifting it to his nose to smell the lingering traces of her perfume mixed with the salt-spray of ocean.

He could very nearly pretend she was there with him, then.

Those early-morning hours are good for melancholy memories like that, and Terry only allows himself the luxury of rolling around in his grief in times like this. The only sound in the house is the clock ticking up on the wall, his old cat is curled up at the foot of the bed sleeping like not even an atom bomb could wake her.

It's quiet, and that's when Terry thinks about the sad things - in the quiet. It doesn't do him any good to be sad during daylight. Now, though, it feels like speaking to Peggy, it really does.

He's dozing, just a little, a book open in his lap with the words already beginning to swim together, shifting, floating up and down the page independently of Terry's vision. It's a sign, and he gives a long sigh.

"All right, Peg, I get the point," He grumbles, pushing himself up. His reading glasses have slipped down his nose. He started walking, but... he didn't move fast.

Staying awake late at night makes him feel like Peggy is close, but as soon as he gets into bed, the great big no one on the other side of... it keeps him up, thinking of how the shape of her is still a part of the mattress, but her body won't ever fit so snugly into it ever again.

His son's been pushing him to buy a new one, but he'll do it when he's damn good and ready to let the slight indentation go, and not a moment before. His son doesn't get it - Jeremy was always about what's new, not what lasts.

He used to say 'the kids are like that these days', but it's been 'these days' for a long time, and eventually he has to admit he's the one living outside of what counts as normal times.

He's made it just to his bed, staring at it in vague distaste, when he hears the sound.

At first he tracks only a vague scream, too close by to be an echo from anywhere else. He pauses, glancing up towards the window. Needs cleaned, he thinks to himself idly. Maybe he'll take a walk around the house and do some wiping tomorrow. Could stand to pressure-wash the siding, too, while he's at it - if he doesn't do it, his son will show up and insist on taking over. Terry's old but he's not helpless, and that's an argument he'd rather avoid.

If he never hears Jeremy's earnest I just worry about you out here alone, Dad, again, it'll be too soon.

There's a crash, and he wonders if maybe some deer are racing past, chased deep into the woods that seem to split around Terry's old house like the tide parting around a rock, but the crash doesn't fade. It gets louder.

There's a scrape, and then the sound of something going SMACK into the hallway window, and Terry jumps, feeling his heart jump within him, his whole body going still.

He shuffles towards the hallway, but he doesn't make it before the noise comes again - and with the noise, a voice.

SMACK.

“S-S'il vous, vous, v-vous, vous plait! S'il vous plait! J’ai, j’ai, j-jai-jai-jai besoin d'aide! Besoin d’aide! S’il te plait!”

Terry's eyebrows furrow, heavy and dark over his nose, the only part of his hair that hasn't gone full white with time. When he turns the corner, his eyes widen instead.

There's a boy at the window, or a young man.

Terry sees red hair, tangled and wild, smears of red down the side of a freckled face nearly white in the moonlight. The boy's hands hit the glass, again and again, panicked, looking less worried than wild.

Terry moves closer, warily. He raises his voice to be heard through the window. “Son? Are you quite aware it is the middle of the damn night?”

The boy's face crumples, and Terry reads the relief there plain as day. It's the kind of face that can't lie even if it wants to, and while Terry's first thought had been robbers sending bait to lure him outside - even though he's hours from anything worthwhile and he sure doesn't have anything worth stealing himself - that thought falls apart at the sharply-written pain, and fear.

“I, I need a medic!” The boy shouts, bangs on the window one more time, and then turns away, looking back over his shoulder. Terry watches in confusion as the boy shudders, flinching and stumbling back with his hands up, as though he sees something that Terry doesn't.

Drugs, Terry thinks. He's on drugs. Acid, or something. Jeremy used to take acid back in college, it's called LSD he said, like he didn't know his own dad served in Vietnam and Desert Storm and sure as fuck knew what drugs you took to forget about it.

Although, come to think of it, what had the boy just said?

The boy looks down, but he turns back when Terry pushes the window open. The shriek it makes as an ancient frame slides against the pane has the boy shuddering, shaking his head, rocking back and forth in a strange unfamiliar way.

Terry clears his throat. “Y’need a what?”

“A medic! Please! I, I’m with the 307th, K Company. He’s been hurt up on the, the-the-the-the… the road! The, the road, up the road! He needs a medic! I, I don’t have m-my uniform, don’t, don’t have it, but he needs help! Please, sir! Send a medic, a, a medic, please!”

Terry's been watching old war documentaries, he's not sure why. Just watched one on the Great War, the Lost Battalion, soldiers who fought surrounded in the woods alone until help could arrive.

The K Company of the 307th Infantry was one of the regiments lost in the woods. Hell, he even remembers the narrator mentioning they were down a medic for the fight, thanks to the defection of their Un-Dead medic to the German side just before.

He almost forgets how to speak. He realizes what he's looking at - the old-fashioned haircut, the hint of an Irish accent lilting around the edges of all his words, the blood on his head and face, enough blood that no one who suffered such a wound could have stayed conscious.

Terry Rouse is staring at a ghost.

Peggy always believed in ghosts. She'd tell him to speak to it, ask what business it needs help finishing. The spirits are scared, when they can't go home to heaven, she'd say. You have to help them remember, finish what's kept them here for so long. He'd roll his eyes, affectionate, but he'd stay quiet while she spoke to the haunted places and swore she could feel them shift in response.

So, for Peggy's sake, he tries it himself, now. “Who needs help? Son, you’re not making sense-… there’s no need to shout, I can hear you just fine-”

“We’re, we’re trapped! They’re firing! He, he he he he needs a medic, a, a medic…” The boy stumbles away, leaning hard on one leg, half-limping as he runs back into the woods.

"Son? Son!" Terry frowns, and then he turns away, heading down the hallway at a quick clip, out to the front room to grab his coat from the rack by the door, and his shotgun too, just in case.

He steps outside, slamming the door shut behind him, and sees the flash of red hair disappearing into the woods.

There's another cry, pure terror, and then the ghost screams, “Medic, please, please, a medic! Please!”

Terry Rouse swallows down his own nerves, digs the keys out of his coat pocket, and heads for his old truck, sitting in the drive.

The ghost said someone up on the road needs help.

And it's not like he was sleeping, anyway.

Terry gets the old truck to rumble to life, patting it on the dashboard, and backs up, heading back down the driveway, up towards the highway.

If there's nothing there, he figures, he still tried his best to help a ghost out, and Peggy'd appreciate that.

She'd always liked that he would believe her, even if it didn't believe in it himself.

If there is someone who needs help up there... well...

"You can say I told you so, then," Terry Rouse whispers to his dead wife's memory. "When I come to you, you can say I told you so over and over again."

He feels her head brush against his arm, and it's just some old memory sticking to him, but he can't bring himself to mind it.

#grief tw #whump #vampire chris au #writer asks #writing asks #pov ask #dead parter tw #ptsd tw #flashback tw #military flashback #war flashback #war flashbacks #war whump #vampire whumpee #referenced head wound

Mick pulled a George 2020 imola moment, huh??

#WAR FLASHBACK #HAHAHA PAIN #f1 #imola gp 2021 #mick schumacher #george russell

I remember when Biden voters said Internationals (read: not just white people, even people like Iraquis, Afghans, Vietnamese, Iranians, Latino Americans) weren't allowed to talk about American politics. I thought liberals were going to “hold Biden’s feet to the fire after the election” oh wait no I didn’t.

I remember because I was one of the foreigner who wasn’t allowed to discuss American politics like everyone was coming for me for saying Biden is the same as Trump and look where we are now.

I literally said nothing will change except that white people won’t be mad about it anymore now that a democrat is in charge and normal racism is back.

#literally was fighting for my life on here #war flashback

Draxum was probably getting some Shredder flashbacks from what that demon kid put him through.

#war flashback #draxum: shredder is better by comparison #rottmnt #txt