AN: My apologies for this, I had some serious problems finishing this chapter. Mostly because I changed the point of view to Duo's. It made me explore the world in his troubled head and it made it very difficult to put out into words. PTSD is something that I've only experienced as an outsider, but I tried to make it as real for Duo as it is for my friend in the Army – the inspiration for this story.

A Vicious Cycle

By SaiyanBlack

He walked listlessly in the rain, soaked to the skin in his greasy jumpsuit and the tee-shirt and jeans underneath. His bangs were in his eyes, but he couldn't see straight anyway, his eyes clouded by the silent tears that mixed with the heavy artificial rain.

Inside, he was just as numb as the machine-made wind and rain was making him on the outside. He'd done something wrong. In the midst of what his psychiatrist called an "episode," he'd hit a friend. He had broken Luke's nose, felt the bone crack under his knuckles watched him fall back to the ground, hand on his face, blood welling up between his fingers.

That image, the surprise in Luke's eyes, stayed in his mind as he'd run away from the junkyard. And Hilde…

She'd been covered in mud, soaking wet, and fear in her eyes. Fear of him. That's why he'd run.

For the first time since he'd left the junkyard, he stopped and looked at his surroundings. He was on the other side of the colony in a busier corporate district. On the street lamp just ahead of him, he noticed a sign pointing at the next turn.

L2 COLONY SPACEPORT

NEXT RIGHT

He turned right.

It took him a while, but he'd managed to get into the spaceport without arousing too many strange looks because of the way he was dressed and found a clothing shop on one of the lower levels were he could buy new clothes and change. He was lucky that he reflexively put his wallet in his back pocket that morning because he was also able to by a backpack for his old clothes and a one-way ticket to Earth.

He couldn't go back.

Not yet.

Nearly twenty-four hours later, he found himself outside of a familiar gate, one that he had seen many times before in previous years. It was no different now, still closed protectively to ward off anyone that would seek to harm the precious being inside the well-sized house beyond it.

He was not surprised to find that once he got past the gate (he had a code for it), it was the same old man that answered the grand front door.

"Master Duo, what a pleasant surprise."

"Nice to see you too, Pagan. Any chance that Heero is here?"

"Would you stop looking at me like that?"

His only reaction was the arch of a dark brow, but Relena's full-time body guard and companion didn't make a sound. Duo felt worse than he had before with that blank gaze directed at him and he shifted in his seat uncomfortably. It was just too much.

"What?" he asked, knowing that he was going to get a lecture from the quiet man. But he said nothing and it made Duo nervous. His leg started to bounce and he looked around the room, anywhere but at the other man.

He was messing with Duo's head, by just staring at him like that. Why didn't he say anything? Why didn't he call him an idiot or stupid? It wasn't as if this sort of silence was out of character for the ex-pilot, there used to be times where all Duo would get from him was a grunt or glare for his vocal troubles. He sort of wished he would get that now and this accusing silence would end. In its own way, it was worse than any lecture he could get from the other man. After ten minutes of this treatment, he snapped.

"Say something!"

Heero raised that eyebrow again and said coolly, "What would you like me to say?"

"I don't know!" Duo cried, putting his head into his hands, sitting forward in the parlor chair. "Something! Don't just sit there and stare at me as if I'm a child to be chastised!"

"Why would you need to be chastised?"

"Because I've done something bad." Somehow he had lost control of the situation and he answered the question without thinking twice about it. Heero always seemed to have this affect on him.

"What have you done?" his voice was bland and strangely comforting despite having so little emotion coming through.

"I hit a friend," the braided man said, feeling the self-betrayal and degradation rise up in him again. He had managed to push it aside while traveling, but it was coming back with friends now that he was talking to Heero. "Someone that trusted me."

"Why did you hit him?"

"I didn't know it was him, I was so caught up in…" he stopped and looked up at Heero accusingly. "How did you know that the person I hit was a 'he'?"

The dark haired man didn't seem at all fazed by the glare Duo sent him and continued to sit casually in the chair on the other side of the coffee table. Or as causally as Heero Yuy could ever sit in an overstuffed chair in a classic parlor. Duo would have thought the sight somewhat funny if he hadn't just realized that the professional bodyguard knew exactly what was going on even before he said anything.

"Hilde called me yesterday when you didn't return to the junkyard after running away," the way he said it made it sound like something bad… but Duo had to admit that he was already ashamed of his actions. He had been a Gundam Pilot, damn it! He was not a coward!

Yes he was.

He was afraid of himself. Of dreams that had him screaming in his sleep; of visions that invaded his daily life and made him react in ways he normally wouldn't.

He was afraid for his friends… for Hilde, who slept only a wall away and cared for him during the 'rough spots.' He would die if he hurt her and what happened with the car dealer and Luke only made him more concerned for her safety. What if, during one of his flashbacks, he struck her? What if, one time she woke him up from a nightmare, he injured her?

He was a coward.

He ran away from his problems.

When Duo looked up at Heero, the other man seemed to know exactly what had gone on in his head as he sat there. He seemed to know every one of the concerns he had about his problem. Heero watched him with understanding eyes and Duo found himself humbled by the ex-pilot before him.

"How is Luke?"

There was no change in Heero's expression as he answered the sudden question, "Luke is fine. You only managed to break his nose in one place. It should heal in a month or so."

Duo placed his head back into his hands. "How's…" he swallowed, suddenly finding speech somewhat difficult, "…how's Hilde?"

"Worried. She wants you to call her so she knows you're okay."

"I'll call her. Thanks Heero."

"Hn."

He didn't call her. He was a coward.

"Did you know that you're eyes are almost gray?" he asked, running the tip of one finger across the soft skin of her face, feeling the contours of her cheeks and brows. They were resting quietly on her bed, just content to lay in each other's presence as the afternoon seemed to crawl by outside of their home. Duo lay above her, resting on his elbows as he smoothed her hair and skin with gentle, lazy movements. He gazed down at her, struck by the sight of her below him with lidded eyes – looking entirely like a satisfied lover with her small smile.

"Really?" she asked quietly, although she seemed more interested by his face than what he was saying to her. Her gray-blue eyes stayed focused on his, watching his expressions as he made a point to memorize the image of her as she presented her self to him.

"Uh huh," he nodded, cocking his head to one side as if to see her from a different angle. His fingers trailed down the bridge of her nose and she scrunched it when he pressed on the tip. He laughed and smoothed out the lines on her forehead. "You also have a button nose still," he told her, a teasing smirk crossing his face.

"At least my nose isn't as big as yours," she teased, pinching the appendage between her thumb and forefinger to prove her point. He jerked his head away reflexively and immediately went for her sides in retaliation. His reward was her shrieking laughter as she tried to get away from his fingers, but he had her pinned down to the bed with his lower body.

"Not fair!" she squealed as he found a particularly sensitive spot beneath her ribs, "You're bigger!"

"All the better to make sure you can't kick me where it hurts," he told her, catching her legs between his as she got dangerously close to the crotch of his jeans as she struggled to get free.

"Duo! Get OFF!"

"Nope, sorry!" he laughed, "I'm having way too much fun!"

"Meanie!"

Outside the window, it began to rain…

The laughter was gone, and instead he heard screams – her screams. He wasn't on her bed on one lazy afternoon, but standing just inside the gates to the junkyard, watching that rainy day play out before him again. And again, he tried to move – tried to prevent what he knew was going to happen if he didn't get there to stop the raging car dealer. But he couldn't. His legs wouldn't move. His arms, his head, his mouth wouldn't move. He was stuck there, standing in the drizzling rain watching.

The old man, so much bigger in girth and weight, easily knocked her down into the mud. She slid a couple of feet before she stopped, but there was no time to recover because the man was on her again, his arms lashing out to hit and grab her. He watched, blow after blow, unable to close his eyes or look away, until she lay there unmoving on the ground – completely silent. Not a sound or a breath came from her and as he watched, unable to do a thing, the dealer reached into his jacket and pulled out a device that he had seen and used too many times in his life.

The overcast sky made no glint on the barrel of the hand gun, but the rain fell in heavy drops as it collected on the smooth metal and the man's hand as he pointed it directly at the small, motionless body before him. Suddenly, he could move and as he ran closer the sound of a gun shot rang through the air – he screamed.

"No!"

Eyes wide and breathing hard, he stared at the ceiling above him, waiting for his mind and body to register where he was. It wasn't raining. The only sound he heard was that of crickets outside the window. He wasn't at home in the junkyard. Instead he was in a spare bedroom at the Peacecraft Mansion, staying with Heero and Relena. Hilde wasn't dead. He'd arrived in time to stop the dealer from striking her the first time.

He thought back to the dream, one that had recently become constant since the incident with the car dealer outside of the yard. Every night he was unable to move until the last possible moment and he was always too late. The sound of the gun shot, the fear, the stabbing knowledge that she was dead, always woke him. And like every night for the past week, tears began to fall silently from the corners of his eyes.

He turned over and wished for the millionth time that Hilde was there to kiss them away.

Relena smiled at him from across the kitchen table. For a wealthy politician with an extremely large house and staff, Relena rarely seemed to eat in the equally large dinning room adjacent to the professional kitchen. She said she was much more comfortable eating at the small round table in the kitchen and no one else in the house said a word about it. In the eight days he had been a guest at the Dorlan Mansion, it had become routine for him to come down to breakfast and find Relena eating her eggs and fruit salad while going over files before work and Heero sitting on her left, reading the newspaper as he ate the hardy breakfast that Pagan had provided for him.

It was strange… but routine. It was only a couple of years ago that Duo could have sworn that no one would ever see Heero in such a domestic setting.

Go figure.

Currently, though, it was a Friday afternoon and the Princess was home for lunch. Heero was in his office, according to Relena and would be back in the kitchen in a couple of minutes when he was finished with whatever had sent him into the reclusive room. In the meantime – he managed to entertain Relena with jokes and teasing as they ate, and she had forgone trying to laugh politely around her salad.

He was in the middle of a story he'd gotten from Hilde when he noticed Heero standing in the doorway, watching him.

"Hey buddy, you missed the Princess nearly choking on a crouton. What kind of bodyguard are you, letting your charge nearly choke to death?"

This was all purely teasing and Relena scolded him from across the table, "Duo!" But the other man's stern expression didn't change and Duo stopped laughing. He could tell when something was wrong.

"You didn't call her," Heero said flatly, but Duo could hear the accusation behind the words. He winced visibly, caught in his lie. He looked away from them, hating the stares they each gave him. Pity… he hated when people looked at him like that.

"Never got around to it," he lied, but Heero shook his head as if he was disappointed with that answer.

"Stop running away from your problems Duo," the bodyguard said, "They won't go away on their own."

"Don't you think I know that?" the braided man snapped. "But I promised myself after the war that the last thing I would ever do is put Hilde in danger again!" The anger washed away suddenly and he felt empty again, "Besides, she deserves someone better than me."

"You're an idiot."

Violet eyes glared at the man standing in the doorway, "Look who's talking Yuy! I can remember one suicidal Gundam pilot saying something along the same lines about five years ago."

Heero sent him that glare that used to give him the shivers back when they were younger, now it just made him angry – at himself. It had been a low blow, and Duo wished that he could have taken it back or have gone back in time to stop himself from saying it. He was a messed up, piece of shit and he was slowly pushing away everyone that cared about his sorry ass. The other pilot turned to leave the room, but stopped short to look back over his shoulder.

"Go home, Duo. No one can help you until you want to help yourself."

After a small silence in the wake of Heero's departure, Relena reached across the table to place her hand on his and when he looked up at her, she gave him a comforting smile. Looking into her kind blue eyes he felt like scum. Here was Relena – the former Queen of the World, holding his hand after he insulted her bodyguard. He didn't deserve her friendship, or Heero's.

Definitely, not Heero's.

"He's right, you know," he told her. "No one can help me if I can't help myself."

Her fingers tightened on his, "Go home, Duo. Go home to Hilde."

"I can't, princess. Sorry."

He stood and moved to leave the room. He needed to put the few things he had with him in the house and leave. He had stayed long beyond his welcome and he needed to go before he lost any friendship he had ever had with the quiet pilot and the kind princess. But she stopped him at the door with her voice.

"Hilde loves you, Duo. She just wants to be with you, no matter how dangerous you think you are."

"I'm not the only idiot then, huh princess?"

He was packed within fifteen minutes. All he had with him were the bag and clothes he bought, as well as the clothing he had left the junkyard in. Everything else he had used in the past week was borrowed – either from Heero's closet or from Relena's stash of supplies for guests. He had his wallet and money, and at the moment, that's all he needed to get by for a while.

He'd said goodbye to Relena and Pagan, the former of which hugged him tightly and told him for the second time that afternoon to go home – to Hilde… who loved him. Scary thought, that. The petite woman that slept in the room next to his and made sure he ate three square meals a day loved him. Loved him enough to let him sleep in her bed after a nightmare. Loved him enough to want him back after everything that had happened.

Good Lord, he loved that woman.

And, Jesus Christ, he missed her.

But he'd made up his mind; there was no way he was going back. Not yet. Not until he could figure out exactly what was going on in his head for himself. No more psychiatrists, no more medication, no more pity. He was going to work out his problems on his own. There was just one more thing he needed to do, and that's how he found himself outside of Heero's office at the Dorlan Mansion, waiting for his knock to be answered from within.

There was a grunt from beyond the door and he took it as an invitation. Heero's office was somewhat like him – sparse. White walls, the same wood flooring that ran through most of the lower level of the house and an oversized desk. The wall adjacent to the door was composed of built-in bookshelves that ran the length of the room, floor to ceiling. Duo thought it was safe to say that there was no "light reading" on those shelves.

Heero was sitting at the desk, typing on his laptop and completely ignoring him, even after he cleared his throat a couple of times. The silent treatment made him feel worse.

"Look, Heero," he started, but Relena's bodyguard didn't look up from his laptop, "I'm sorry about what I said earlier. You're right; I'm an idiot. I don't deserve friends like you or Relena or Hilde. You've been there for me ever since I was diagnosed, and I had no right to take out my frustration on you. And you're right about not wanting to help myself get through this, so I'm leaving. I need to be on my own for a while. I promise to actually call Hilde, too." He looked at Heero, but got no acknowledgement from him.

"Thanks for everything, Heero," he turned to leave the room, "I guess I'll be seeing you around."

He'd found a small hotel on the west coast of the European continent, away from any of the larger cities where he could think without having to worry about being social. The room had a single bed and its own bathroom, enough to satisfy him for the duration of his stay. But probably the best of all was the old phone sitting on the bedside table – not a vid-phone, but an old handheld. He still needed to call Hilde, and he didn't think he could face her, even through a phone line.

So after he'd checked in and grabbed a sandwich from the small restaurant downstairs, he settled himself on the bed and proceeded to stare at the device as if it would give him courage to pick it up. It only seemed to make him frightened of it. Despite the growing fear of dread in his chest, he picked up the receiver and dialed the familiar number to the house on L2.

It rang; once, twice, three times, four – it picked up.

He heard his own voice on the other side.

"You've reached the home of Duo Maxwell and Hilde Schbeiker. Sorry, neither of us is available at the moment, so leave a message and we'll be sure to call you back. And the tone in three, two, one…"

God, he hated that recording, especially the video feed that went along with it. It was stupid and corny and it had been recorded several years ago, so people continued to think that he and Hilde were just out of puberty. They should probably re-record that thing once he got …

BEEP!

Shit. He had no idea what to say.

"Um, hi Hil. It's Duo." Well shit, what could he say? "Look, I'm sorry about everything… for running off like that and for not calling. I'm a bastard, babe, and I know it." Why did he suddenly feel like crying? "I swear… I swear I'll make it up to you. But right now… now I just have to be on my own for a little while. I have to figure this out all on my own. Heero told me that I have to want to help myself before others can help me. He's right… I didn't want help, so… I figure that I need to think about things on my own before I come home. But Hil –" his voice cracked and he tried to clear his throat without success, "I'm going to come home. I promise, just… not yet. Not yet."

He could feel his body shaking and the wetness of his cheeks. This was one of the hardest things he had ever done and he wasn't even talking to an actual person, just a machine. But the knowledge that this would be heard by her made him nervous and he wanted it to comfort her. Relena's words kept appearing in his mind.

"Hilde, babe… I love you. I'll be home soon."

It hurt to put the receiver down.

He lay back onto the bed, stared at the ceiling blankly until he could no longer distinguish the lines between the white tiles and then closed his eyes. He slept.

He woke two hours later to a dim room; the sun had nearly set and pink and orange dusk light came in through the open window. Sounds seemed muted, as if he was still dreaming. When he stood, he felt light headed and put his hand to the wall to catch himself as he tipped to the side. It was the weirdest feeling and he shook his head to get rid of it. That only seemed to make the feeling worse.

"This is insane…"

What the hell was wrong with his head? It felt as if he was breathing in water instead of air and it seemed to take him more strength than usual to lift his feet from the floor. The walls seemed to sway, the furniture moved. And he saw his shadow on the carpet ahead of him, a flickering orange background around it. There was heat behind him, scalding waves that made him sweat.

Holding onto the wall with one hand, the other against his head, Duo turned around to see where the light and heat were coming from. The hotel room was still there, but the window had flames behind it and some reached around the edges of the frame, licking the curtains until they too were covered in flame. Through the window, he could see a familiar stone structure, fire coming through the large front doors that had been broken down and burned and through the long openings where stained glass visages had been blown out by machine gun fire.

It was the Maxwell Church he was seeing, covered in flames with everyone he had learned to love as a child inside. It was the last image he remembered about the house of God. It had been the home of the only father he had ever known.

And he wasn't talking about the big man upstairs either.

As he stared, the walls around him went down in flames; the carpet, the bed, and the TV stand burning with choking smoke. There was a familiar scent in the smoke and he began to gag. It was the smell of burning flesh. He turned away from the sight of the church to hide his face from the smoke, only to see that the hand that had been touching the wall of the hotel room – a wall which was now completely gone – was covered in fames itself. But he couldn't feel the fire, couldn't feel his flesh burning. As it spread along his arm, his shirt caught on fire and his hair. Everything started to waver as he fell back, tripped and fell into a hole behind him. His head hit something hard and his eyes closed from the pain and he grabbed the back of his head.

When he opened them again, he found himself not in a flaming world of burning churches, but in the bath tub of the hotel room on the coast of Europe. The heat he had felt was gone, replaced by the chilling cold of the porcelain tub. He got up, slowly, and felt the back of his head for any sign of a lump or concussion. He found none, but when he stepped back out into the bedroom the window caught his attention.

It was a vibrant sunset off of the ocean, full of reds and oranges and yellows. The sky itself looked as if it was on fire. It was then that Duo realized that the colors had set off that vision of the Maxwell Church in flames. He sat on the bed and tried to remember if the 'episodes' he had before had been triggered by something like that.

The last time had been when he'd attacked the car dealer. One moment he had been punching that fat, old bastard and the next… it had been one of the soldiers that had taken up residence in the church – had threatened Father Maxwell and Sister Helen. It wasn't a memory, since he hadn't been more than ten when that happened and he would have never been strong enough to knock a full grown man down if he had tried. Instead, it was almost like something he wished he could have done at the time, revenge against the man who had brought the war to his home.

This was a revelation.

There were emotions and sensory things that were triggering these visions. But was there a way for them to stop? Short of letting the day-dream run its course or someone snapping him out of it, could there be a way?

This last one, he'd smacked his head on the back of the tub – had that been what had gotten him out of it? But that had never happened before. When he'd hit Luke – he'd been so into tearing that soldier apart that he had turned and struck whoever had tried to pull him away. It wasn't the other man's cry of pain or the way he stepped back from the blow that had pulled him out of it – it had been his eyes. Surprised, wide brown eyes that didn't look angry – not the way that a soldier would look if you got them in the face during a fight. He kept thinking back to other 'episodes.'

Once when a car had backfired, he'd jumped to attention as if it had been gunfire. He'd knocked over the kitchen table in his panic and his mind had filled in the explosions and screams of the war. He could have sworn for one moment that he had been standing in the cockpit of the Deathscythe, watching war rage on the streets. Suddenly, something touched his arm and when he turned around, Hilde was behind him and Deathscythe and the battle were gone. She'd snapped him out of it.

His head hurt.

Although, that could be from the tile behind the tub.

What the hell was the answer? Was it getting startled? In the flaming church, he'd been surprised to see his hand and arm on fire, but it hadn't hurt – it was just a visual. But when he'd hit his head… that had hurt and that's when the flames had vanished.

Strange.

With Luke, it had been the expression in the eyes, something out of the ordinary for the world he had thought he was in.

Wait. That was it! Things that didn't flow with the rest of what was happening would pull him out of it: Hilde's touch, Luke's eyes, the pain from falling. Maybe he could figure out how to stop it himself the next time it came around.

At that moment though, he just wanted some sleep.

He spent the rest of the week at the hotel, sleeping quite a bit in the day because of nightmares that seemed to sneak up on him at random hours of the night. Without his medication, he was forced to try and get back to sleep with a body full of adrenaline and half-remembered images. It usually didn't work and he found himself watching the television in his room until he fell asleep around dawn.

When he was awake in the day, he walked around the town he had found himself in. It was quaint, full of the day-to-day life of the people that lived there. Despite it's location on the coast, it wasn't a tourist spot and there were few travelers like himself. It was somewhat of a blessing, he felt, since he enjoyed the off-hand friendliness of the locals and they didn't care to ask about his business in the town.

That Friday, a week after he'd left Relena and Heero, he found himself on the beach early in the morning. He'd woken up from a nightmare just before five o'clock and had decided to take a walk down to the ocean that he could hear from his hotel window, but not see. He thought it would clear his head.

Mist was settled around the coast and the buildings and it made the air feel heavy around him as he walked slowly down the beach, shoes off and jean cuffs rolled up. It was pleasant and calming, allowing him to let his mind wander – until he stumbled, his foot caught in the suction of the sand and water for a moment. He looked down at his bare feet, wet and sand-covered, but as he looked up, everything had changed.

He was standing in a dirty alley, staring down the long passage between two tall buildings. Laundry hung above him; he could hear screams from a distance behind him; he looked down: his feet were bare and dirty. As he was looking, his hair fell around his face, unbound, dirty, shoulder length hair. It had been a long time since his hair had been that short.

About fifteen years.

He recognized this place and as he heard footsteps – bare, short stride, just barely heard above the noise of the city around him – he had a good idea of who he would see should he turn around. He didn't want to see that face again, but his dream-mind told there was another reason that he shouldn't turn around. He was in trouble. He'd left the group, left the hide-out, gone out on his own without permission. He'd gotten lost, couldn't find his way back to the place he knew as home. So he'd cried like the six-year-old he was until…

Until Solo had found him.

He knew, that if he turned around right then, that's who he would find standing behind him. But… this wasn't real was it. It was a memory – a living dream. If he turned around he would see that smile, that warm comforting smile of the boy who had found him. If he turned around that smile would vanish, because Solo would be on the ground – dead.

He started to panic. He had to stop the vision. He had to think of something else, something…

Hilde.

Hilde's smile. Hilde's laugh. Hilde's eyes. Hilde's arms. Hilde…

He blinked and he was back on the beach. The surf was pulling on his ankles and he had to take a moment to extract his feet from the holes they had made in the sand. He washed his feet off in the surf, slipped his shoes back on and began the walk up the beach and back to his hotel.

She was the first thing he saw when he entered the yard mid-morning of the next day. He'd caught the first shuttle he could off of the Earth and he had nearly caused an accident in the shuttle port pick-up trying to hail down a taxi. He'd slipped past Scott at the main gate, who was talking to a truck driver on his way out of the junkyard with a shipment for the space-flight company on the colony, and made his way down the beaten path to the house.

To his surprise, she was overseeing the loading of a second truck and was standing only yards away from him. He felt his heartbeat speed up in anticipation, but he had no idea how to approach her.

It ended up being done for him, because one of the workers on the shipment spotted him before he could say a word. The man's surprised cry drew Hilde's attention and she looked at the man on the truck before following his gaze… right to Duo. He said the first thing that came to mind.

"Hey babe."

She dropped her clipboard and proceeded to launch herself at him.

He caught her up against his chest, dropping his bag in the process, and held her tight, her feet off the ground. Face in her shoulder, he reacquainted himself with the small woman, smelling her hair and feeling her sides and back. Good Lord, how he'd missed this. Pulling her legs up onto his hips so that he was holding her like a child, he smoothed her back with one hand to soothe her tears.

"Hilde, I'm so sorry," he told her, pressing the side of his face against her hair. "I love you, babe."

She let loose a sound that seemed like a cross between a sob and a laugh, "I love you too, Duo." She pulled back from his hold and he let her down onto her feet. Suddenly, she was out of his arms completely and sending the flat of her palm against his chest. "You scared the shit out of me!"

Hilde hugged him again and as he put his arms around her, he laughed.

It felt good to be home.

Wow. It's finished. Took me a while, but I finally managed it. Thank you for everyone that reviewed and encouraged me to continue. Thank you to my friend in the military for letting me use him for inspiration and as a source of study.

If anyone would like to learn more about PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and the many different effects it has on both men and women, please visit the National Center for PTSD website.