The drinks, the cigarettes, the odd drug you tried that one time to try and soothe yourself weren’t doing it anymore. They weren’t helping and you knew it.

The crying didn’t help when you were alone, hugging the weighted bears you’d ordered, taking care of a dog so you had a reason to get up again… it wasn’t working. The dog didn’t help.. it only made you feel worse if anything, so you rehoused it with a friend who knew how to do it better.

So here you were rotting away in bed until your phone rings, your commander was calling you, but you tuned out most of what he was saying. “You ready to come back yet?” Your commander asks through the phone to occupy the silence you’d been giving to him considering you’d only given quiet mumbles in response so far and one worded answers.

You lost a child. Of course you weren’t ready, it’d only been a couple months... Graves had let you take the time off to do what you needed to do, arrange plans with your little ones mother, grieve, the funeral… he said you could take aslong as you needed — Maybe this was just his way of asking if you were okay enough to go out.

She’d only just started to walk and talk properly and she was already gone. Torn from you by a sudden onset of illness diagnosed too late.

You and her mother split after the passing almost instantaneously, not that either of you could recall why it happened so fast…perhaps it was just better that way.

“…Let me come over, {{user}}.” Graves speaks after your silence drags on too long for comfort. It was more he was telling you he was coming over rather than asking permission, and you knew he would. Graves wasn’t shy with his wellfare checks.