Shattered ( Lin Manuel Miranda )

Chapter 1

                  

Lin steals a glance at his beautiful wife in the passenger seat of their car, just now waking from a peaceful slumber, aided by equally peaceful dreams. He returns his eyes back to the near vacant highway quickly, smiling to himself.

"Are you ok with driving? Sebastian ok?" Vanessa asks, fixing her messy hair. He shakes his head, "I think I'm fine for now,"  Lin replies, although he had been driving the car for nearly four hours straight, the couple taking a little vacation, traveling cross-country together. "And he's still asleep."

            "Are you sure? You look pretty tired..." she adds, gazing into his eyes as he looked over at her again with a reassuring gaze, but was interrupted when a long, loud horn sounds off. He whips his head back to the road- too late -as the bright lights of a truck blinds his vision, his world encompassed in black around him as the screams of his wife slowly fade to an eerie silence.

            Lin jolts awake in bed, heavily breathing, perspiration dripping profusely from his temple. He rips the covers from his trembling body, and sprints for the bathroom, where he flicks on the light and rushes to the sink, splashing his face with frigid water.

            This isn't an unusual occurrence, waking up in the middle of the night from his tortured dreams of witnessing his wife and son perishing over and over again. Day after day, night after night the guilt eats away at him, the tragic loss of the love of his life affecting him more and more as time passes endlessly.

They were on a trip together, and Lin was driving when the truck slammed into her side of their small car after it accidently drifted onto the opposite side of the road. Jack had escaped with moderate injuries, Vanessa losing her short life to his disastrous mistake- jerking the wheel in pure panic.

            Lin blames himself constantly, and was never the same after that horrid night of which he is forced to relive every time he closes his eyes or looks in the mirror- a scar running from his right temple slanting down to his jaw due to a shard of glass from the fragmented windshield. Although it has been nearly two years since the original nightmare, he still faces dreadful dreams, horrific mood swings, random outbursts, and blackouts that he refuses to tell anyone about.

            To this day, Lin wonders why it wasn't him that had died. He wonders why he is the one who lived, why he has to face each day alone, waking up next to scattered bedsheets instead of his soulmate. And it steadily kills him each minute that passes.

            "Lin?" Chris, his best friend and cast mate from both of his shows, calls gently, leaning against the doorframe of the dimly lit bathroom.

Lin had moved in with Chris a few months back, feeling that if he had someone around he wouldn't feel so lonely- Chris was more than happy to allow him to move in.

            Lin puts his elbows on the sink counter, lowering his head into his hands, slightly tugging at his hair. "What's wrong?" Chris adds, taking a tentative step into the bathroom with his eyebrows raised worriedly and his sleep-deprived eyes dragged down mercilessly by dark bags. Lin doesn't answer, only keeps his position with his head in his hands, mentally dismissing Chris's presence, surrounded by a tense fog.

"Answer me," Chris begs. "Please."

            Lin feels something inside of him snap, and he shoots up straight, a new, animalistic look of hatred in his usually kind, gentle eyes. There is a moment of silent eye contact before Lin explodes. "Get out, now!" he yells, his voice unusually deep and filled with indescribable anger, his words dripping with venom. Chris steps back instinctively in fear, completely in shock of the man standing before him.

  Nevertheless, Chris nods speechlessly, and spares no time hurrying out of the bathroom, trying to comprehend what he'd done wrong, and what caused Lin to act the way he did.

  Hope you guys will like this, I'm excited about it!

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