I'm so glad you linked me to this -- even if (or, okay, *because*, like that's a surprise :-)) you break my heart into tiny sharp little shards with it. Steve, Steve, *Steve* -- so alone -- so used to being alone, so used to sucking it up, locking it down. I want him to have Danny and Chin and Kono close enough RIGHT NOW to not let him go through this alone. But yeah, I also want this just the way you write it, because it's the way it HAD to be. That first night HAD to be exactly like this.
I love all the revealing details -- Steve grounding himself with pain from his bullet-wound, feeling the grooves on his key -- *his* key -- the way memories keep ambushing him. The scene of him scrubbing his dad's blood away until the polish is scrubbed off -- Oh GOD. That image alone is enough to kill me, and it's so perfectly right. That he knew just where to go under the kitchen sink to find the cleaning stuff and the rags -- that just brings it all home even harder. His dad never changed things; Steve's walking back into a museum of his aborted childhood, of the dreams he had that didn't come true, of loss and rejection, years' worth of feeling rejected -- and you add in the memories of that phone call (I keep wanting the sound of the ocean to completely and permanently soothe away those remembered HORRIBLE sounds in his head), add in the guilt, add in the exhaustion both physical and emotional, add in that he has no one he feels like he can share any of this load of pain and guilt and memory with -- add in that he doesn't even know HOW to share any of this kind of burden, that it doesn't even cross his mind that he could, *should*, be able to -- holy SHIT. And that last thing, that Steve falls asleep on the couch where he spent the last night before he got sent away? You weren't content just to shatter my heart, you had to go and take all those shattered bits and shatter them into even tinier bits...
This is unbearable and beautiful, and you channel Steve like you're right there inside his head and heart, thinking and feeling and reacting the way his training and his past and his present HAVE to make him think and feel and react. <333333 you. I feel completely wiped out -- and strangely at peace; it's like you've uncovered a hurt that badly needed to be uncovered; even if it can't be fully healed, it at least needed to be documented. (So beautifully documented.)
no subject
I love all the revealing details -- Steve grounding himself with pain from his bullet-wound, feeling the grooves on his key -- *his* key -- the way memories keep ambushing him. The scene of him scrubbing his dad's blood away until the polish is scrubbed off -- Oh GOD. That image alone is enough to kill me, and it's so perfectly right. That he knew just where to go under the kitchen sink to find the cleaning stuff and the rags -- that just brings it all home even harder. His dad never changed things; Steve's walking back into a museum of his aborted childhood, of the dreams he had that didn't come true, of loss and rejection, years' worth of feeling rejected -- and you add in the memories of that phone call (I keep wanting the sound of the ocean to completely and permanently soothe away those remembered HORRIBLE sounds in his head), add in the guilt, add in the exhaustion both physical and emotional, add in that he has no one he feels like he can share any of this load of pain and guilt and memory with -- add in that he doesn't even know HOW to share any of this kind of burden, that it doesn't even cross his mind that he could, *should*, be able to -- holy SHIT. And that last thing, that Steve falls asleep on the couch where he spent the last night before he got sent away? You weren't content just to shatter my heart, you had to go and take all those shattered bits and shatter them into even tinier bits...
This is unbearable and beautiful, and you channel Steve like you're right there inside his head and heart, thinking and feeling and reacting the way his training and his past and his present HAVE to make him think and feel and react. <333333 you. I feel completely wiped out -- and strangely at peace; it's like you've uncovered a hurt that badly needed to be uncovered; even if it can't be fully healed, it at least needed to be documented. (So beautifully documented.)