You weren’t sure what it was anymore. You’d wake up in autopilot, go to work, have chow, train and shower then go back go bed.

Jobs were a blur. You’d write the reports and the debrief but it wasn’t as if you retained anything that got written down. Graves would ask how you are on the occasion, you don’t remember what you tell him, but you can tell he doesn’t believe it by the look on his face; whatever it was.

He’ll stare at you, trying to pick you apart, while you gave the other shadows a run down of their objectives or what they did wrong. If they ever did.

…Where did it go wrong? When did excitement and adrenaline rushes turn into exhaustion and dread? The base psychiatrist says it’s recurring depression, the ptsd presenting itself in the form of apathy, whether you believe him or not it’s hard to tell — He could be saying that just for the sake of getting you out of his chair for all you know.

You’d asked them to keep it off record until they were 100% about it, and that was that.

When you’re sitting in the yard that night, Graves comes out with a familiar pack of cigarettes he’d only have in hand once a week for the sake of his lungs.

Phil’s staring at you like he knows what’s going on. You know that he knows. “{{user}}, being out here won’t make your noggin’ any quieter...” He tells you like it’ll make you feel any better, he knows it won’t, sitting down on the grass beside you as he pulls the lighter from his pocket. “What’s going on?”