InsaneJournal

Who:Mal (Narrative unless anyone does want to tag in? Claire probably makes more sense tho :P)
What:Nightmares and ghosts
When:Today
Where:His place
Warnings:TBA but it is Mal so probably highish!?



No one wins a war, one side just loses less.

Blood, death, ghosts.

These were the things Mal's dreams were made of. These were the things lately he saw asleep or awake. Mal wasn't one who normally cared for or tried naps but for the last four nights every one of them ended the same. Death. Cold sweat, little sleep, shower. At all odd hours of the night into the morning light. Today was no different.

His temporary residence was silent, at least it should have been. His blinds were closed, all should have been peaceful. But for Mal very little was peaceful anymore. Nothing ever just went smooth like. For him all he saw when he closed his eyes and tried to rest were dead bodies piled under the leveled complex building. Some of friends, others of people he'd never seen before but all the same. All dead, all ghosts of his past, all vacant eyes open staring at him. Voices crying out for help, and Mal could do nothing. They were already dead. "You're dead so just go to ruttin hell already or wherever it is you end up! Ain't nothin I can do!" He couldn't reason with the dead. Their voices kept clawing at the very depths of his brain until he felt like he was going mad.

He wasn't a god, he was just a man. No powers of great healing or words of inspiration. Just a soldier with a gun. He was a man with hope and faith in humanity where Gods couldn't reach, and he'd failed them. His feet felt plastered to the ground, and all he could do was watch as the building fell away into the deep black that was hell. The cage. He'd failed them too.

He'd been optimistic at the start, but he wasn't naive. He knew there would be loss he just didn't suspect this. He didn't suspect his own grip to loosen on reality either. He knew battle. He was good at it, so why now did it haunt him? Hadn't he done right? His people were alive. He couldn't claim they were well but tey were alive and that was more than he could say for Serenity Valley. Yet he couldn't sleep. Still eyes watched him of the dead they'd lost. The civilian lives caught in the crossfire he hadn't been able to save. They hadn't been soldiers, they hadn't even had any single idea what was going on around them. How was it fair that this was the result? How was the results of war everywhere the same whether he lived or died?

Every day had ended the same. Nightmares, daymares. It didn't matter whether he slept or not anymore.

It was only worse when he did sleep.

He woke in a cold sweat and reached for the gun on the bedstand out of pure habit, needing to know it was still there. Needing to know the spot beside him was empty and free of ghosts. He looked over expecting to see a corpse, but he saw nothing and finally could breathe again.The hand that had reached for the gun moved to rub at his face as if to free it of its demons. Drinking no longer helped, Mal was sober.

He didn't know what helped anymore.