Written for @buckybuns by @prettyarbitrary Available on AO3
Jack slams the screen door open and all but tumbles down the steps of the back porch while he’s still pulling on his coat. He sinks shin deep in the snow when he hits the ground, and keeps right on going toward the woods that edge the back of the yard.
“Oh, come on, Jack, it’s snowing!” his mother calls from inside, voice rising mournfully over the background noise of his dad’s growly complaining.
“I’ll be back later!” Jack roars over his shoulder. He knows he sounds rude and angry and he doesn’t care.
The snow makes his steps clumsy, but he refuses to slow down till he’s out of sight of the house, plunging into the shadowy grotto the snow has made of the trail opening into their wooded acreage.
They don’t want him to enlist. They want him to stay. “It’s not safe, Jack, the military is for people who don’t have other options.” Well, what they don’t seem to get is that if he doesn’t get out of this place, he’ll die. He can’t stay here his whole damn life or mid-state Indiana is going to bury him alive, one shovel of dirt at a time.
It’s heading toward sunset, not that it needs to be very late for that at this time of year, and the shadows under the trees become increasingly blue as he goes. The snow changes the landscape so that instead of the woods he grew up in, Jack passes through an unexplored new world. With it still coming down, his are the first human footprints to break the fresh blanket of white. He feels like the first person to ever walk here.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2hNk8Dt