Chapter Text
Sometimes when Mitchell couldn’t sleep, he could feel the fingers of his left hand. Sometimes when he sat down to eat, he would reach up with his left hand. Sometimes he forgot it wasn’t there. Sometimes the memory of losing it felt like a dream. Whatever nightmare he was living, it couldn’t have been the real world, could it?
That morning, he forgot anything bad ever happened to the world. Another day in paradise, waking to the heat of summer, sunlight glaring through broken slats covering the window next to his bed. He’d moved his bed twice already after the sun drifted into his eyes, blinding him. Still had trouble closing them, the flash of fire behind eyelids, of Knox’s suffering, mutating facial expressions — calmly waking was rare.
The first time the nightmares came, Mitchell screamed in his sleep. Almost scared Gideon, sitting there in the hospital, keeping Mitchell company. Poor guy didn’t have family; they were the same in a lot of ways.
After the hospital, Mitchell insisted he live on his own. He spent so long at the whims of a psychopath and the military fighting him, there was every right to be alone. Mitchell wanted to be his own person, to prove he could do it. Sure, South Africa wasn’t the best place for that, unfamiliar territory and all, but it was better than America. Better than a country reminding him every day what he almost lost, what he almost caused. The end of the world as they knew it started because a man with a business got greedy. Mitchell didn’t want to be reminded of Will, of Knox, and especially not of Cormack.
Ilona came to take care of him sometimes, dropping off food packages and anything else he might need. Finding work with one arm was nearly impossible.
It came down to Mitchell sitting at home, reading what he could from the newspapers. The most interesting articles came from the ones written in French or Afrikaans. Gideon ignored Mitchell when he’d asked to be taught, assuming the older man knew at least Afrikaans. After getting the silent treatment twice, he stopped asking. Waste of time if he tried otherwise. The day after his second attempt, Ilona brought him a book translating Afrikaans to English.
Life in South Africa became harder as days turned into weeks. Mitchell hadn’t wanted to stay in the hospital. He wanted to be free to find his own way in life. Will had been his biggest influence, and then Will’s father, and then Sentinel. When those were all over, what did he have left? It was a journey Mitchell had to make for himself. A journey that would end in something good or something bad.
Mitchell always assumed it would be the second one.