Lieutenant Buckley – Prologue & Chapter 1 – ScarsLikeVelvet

Reading Time:
9 Minutes

Story

Prologue

Evan Christopher Buckley had joined the Navy the moment he was old enough and worked hard to be allowed to join the Navy SEALs. His hard work and dedication did him all the favors, though it took him two years to be allowed to join BUD/S, even with the support of his instructors.

BUD/S was even more hard work for him, but Evan never shied away from hard work because he had understood young that hard work paid off and helped him get what he wanted, even if his parents hated it, when they realized he had plaid them like a fiddle after his sister left their home for college in 1994. Instead of accepting the fact that his parents intended to have him raised by a nanny, he talked them into sending him off to military school because his ultimate goal was to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and become a Navy SEAL.

He wanted to be worthy of his paternal family’s legacy of military service even though his father avoided it like the plague because he thought it was beneath him to serve others.

Evan didn’t have such compunctions, never had.

When Hell Week dawned bright and early, it was his time to shine. He had learned early on to shut off anything that might become a weak point to be used against him, because that was what his parents had done.

If he didn’t do what they expected him to do, they took his belongings, privileges, and anything that might bring him joy, so he learned that feelings were a weakness. He also learned that pain was meaningless and something to be endured, while not complained about.

Hell Week felt like a walk in the park after the boot camp his parents had put him through in his early childhood and he was one of the few men who didn’t ring out.

He went on to parachute jump school and enjoyed the hell out of those three weeks of specialized training, before going into SEAL QUalification training where he learned advanced skill sets in weapons training, close-quarters combat—something he excelled at—, Small Unit Tactics, land navigation, demolitions, unarmed combat, cold weather training in Kodiak, Alaska, medical skills and maritime operations.

Evan, along with his fellow SEAL trainees, went through SERE training (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape Training) before finally getting awarded the coveted Navy SEAL Trident. He graduated at the top of his class, and was sent to Coronado, California to begin his advanced training for his first deployment.

Because he excelled at both physical and psychological challenges, he took courses in Advanced Close Quarter Combat, Climbing/Rope Skills, Advanced Demolition, and got sent to Language School once they realized he soaked up languages like a sponge just by listening to them.

Once his individual training was finished, he was offered choices on how to support the team he would ultimately be assigned to—EOD or Interpreters/Linguist— and decided to pick the former rather than the latter. He enjoyed making things go BOOM as much as he enjoyed preventing things to go BOOM, while languages were something he used to give his brain something to focus on while he did other things.

Once his Unit Level Training and Task Group Level Training were done, he got his papers for his first deployment. He had just turned twenty years old days before.

————

Undisclosed Location – 2012

Evan’s ears were ringing when he came back to consciousness. His hand automatically went for his gun, but it wasn’t there. For a moment, he thought he’d been captured. He fought through the ringing in his ears, the tilting of the world around him the moment he moved his head, and the full-body pain he was currently experiencing.

A hand landed firmly on his shoulder, and Evan had to force himself from flinching.

“Stay calm, Bastard. You’re in the med tent!” the familiar voice of Colonel Jebediah Treadstone, the doctor heading their medical facilities out here, snapped at him, though it wasn’t as harsh as it normally would be, which was a surefire sign that something really fucked up had happened.

Evan froze under the man’s touch and forced himself to focus on him despite the light behind him making his head hurt as if a bunch of dwarven smiths had set up residence where his brain was supposed to be.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice rough in a way that told him someone had shoved a tube down his throat and that he’d been in surgery. “Did I fuck something up?”

Treadstone gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze before letting go and settling on the chair beside his bed.

“No,” Treadstone said. “It wasn’t you but the new guy did and …”

Colonel Treadstone trailed off for a moment.

“Did anyone aside from me survive his fuckup?” Evan managed to ask, though the look on Colonel Treadstone’s face told him everything he needed to know. He was the lone survivor of the team, which broke his heart in rather unexpected ways.

“What’s my damage?” He asked instead of prodding for an answer, which seemed to tell Treadstone that he knew the answer to his question, and didn’t want to hear it out loud.

Colonel Treadstone rattled of a number of injuries expected from being caught in the concussive blast of an IED. Broken and fractured ribs, a dislocated shoulder and broken collarbone, bruises up the wazoo all over his body, a concussion so bad, it was already called a traumatic brain injury, which would be taking him out of service, because the estimated healing time was longer than his remaining time in service.

“They are discharging me after ten years of service?” Evan rasped, sounding hurt, because he had planned to stay at least another ten years in service before retiring.

“It is for the best, Buckley,” Treadstone said after a moment of silence. “For one, you’ve been hurt so badly, I can’t even ship you home with your team so you can attend their funerals. And two, you are the sole survivor of your team. It’s bound to fuck with you in ways you can’t comprehend just yet because you are still in shock.”

Evan blinked slowly and licked his lips.

“Alright, I’m trusting your assessment of the situation, Colonel,” he said, for the first time since waking realizing that the man sitting at his bedside held a rank quite a bit higher than his own.

“You will figure things out, Lieutenant Buckley, and we’ll make sure you have the support you need while you heal and after, because you can take a man out of the SEALs, but you can never take the SEAL out of the man,” Treadstone assured him, giving his healthy shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Now, I need you to rest as much as possible, so we can get your stubborn ass sent stateside as soon as possible.”

Evan sighed, but did as he was told. He knew Treadstone and his men would take good care of him until he could leave, so he closed his eyes and trusted them to have his back while he healed and figured out a way forward that didn’t involve eating his gun. The thought alone scared him awake again, but when asked what was bothering him, he didn’t voice the thought, and in fact, asked for some water because he was feeling parched.

Chapter 1

Los Angeles, California, USA – 2012

Evan Christopher Buckley had recovered as well as he could, and the moment the doctors and physical therapists allowed him out of their clutches, he got his ass into a gym to rebuilt everything he had lost, because he had finally made a choice on what to do with his life now that he wasn’t an active duty Navy SEAL anymore with the help of his therapist.

While he was still recovering, he had applied to the Los Angeles Fire Academy and got in for their next twenty-four weeks course. Since he knew he wanted to make a career of it, he asked in his entrance interview what he would need to rise through the ranks in due time and was given the information that he would need a degree in Fire Science/Fire Protection Administration to become a Lieutenant after at least four years of full-time service in the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Evan asked that his training be structured in a way that his career could advance that way, and it was noted down in his file. As he waited for his training to start, he enrolled himself in online classes for the Fire Science degree, something he knew he could handle on top of what was bound to come.

Evan lived a very structured life. He had rented a small apartment close to the Fire Academy to make his commute as easy as possible and while he owned a car, he did most of his traveling around on his mountain bike to keep himself in shape. Keeping himself moving was one of the things that helped him cope with what happened. At least on the physical side of things.

The mental load he carried due to the immense amount of Survivor’s Guilt he was feeling, was a different matter all together. The Navy had helped him find a therapist that he could keep even when his insurance shifted from the Navy’s provider to the one the Los Angeles Fire Department used, something Evan appreciated, because he only wanted to tell what caused him to be the way he was once and not multiple times.

He knew eventually someone would come around who he wanted to build a life with. Someone, whom he would need to tell about at least the publicly available parts of what he had gone through, so they could understand the limitations of Evan’s emotional availability or whatever one wanted to call it.

Evan had learned to police his boundaries firmly and fiercely, and he knew a lot of people had serious problems with the way he handled things. He avoided getting physical with people because he was trained to kill and it wasn’t something he could do in his new, civilian life, unless the person attacking him was a threat to his life, and frankly, there were very few people who posed a threat to him these days.

His therapist had tried to talk him into joining the Los Angeles Police Department or the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, but just the thought of carrying a gun made him feel nauseous at the moment, even though gun violence hadn’t caused his injuries. In fact, not once in his career with the Navy had he been shot.

Still, the thought of shooting a gun, the noise. It wasn’t something he felt ready for just yet, though he had accepted an invitation of a fellow former SEAL who was working with NCIS here in Los Angeles to head to the gun range with to keep his skills sharp once his therapist gave him the go ahead. He knew that Sam Hanna, the SEAL in question, could handle him, should he lose his shit, though Evan was working hard to not do that.

When his course at the Fire Academy started, Evan was back to peak physical condition. While his scars were still bright red, they did not hinder him in any way. His uniform was pressed and looking sharp. He was wearing it with the same pride he had worn his SEAL blacks for a decade. The short-armed uniform button-down showed up the fork and chicken tattoo [Navy SEAL eagle and trident] his whole team had gotten shortly after he had joined them, but his was joined by a fresh add-on of the dates from when he joined them from when they left him. It was a quiet way to memorize them since he would always be carrying that particular tattoo anyway.

His shoes were gleaming in the morning sun as he walked up the stairs to the academy, knowing that this was it. The first official day of his new civilian work life.