The Difference Between You And Me {Petekey}

Chapter seventeen

If Mikey ever thought Gerard was going to be chill after Frank left, he was definitely proven wrong when all Gerard wanted to do was mope around and lie in bed with his hands over his face. It was a bit annoying to be honest, and didn't help Mikey get over it himself at all. 

At least after a week, Gerard stopped crying about it and would talk to Mikey if he pushed him enough. Though usually it was something along the lines of 'go away' or 'just go write your stupid letter, why don't you?', which Mikey found hurtful but didn't take too much offence to, since he knew Gerard was going through a tough time.

So was Mikey, though. Frank was his friend, too, and he missed him. If Frank were there, he would know exactly how to calm Gerard down. Although if Frank were there, Gerard wouldn't need calming down at all. 

Mikey wondered how Frank was doing with this, whether he was in as much pain as Gerard or if he was forcing himself to get through it like Mikey. Hopefully he was doing fine, or as fine as he could be. Gerard wouldn't want him to be all sad and depressed, and neither would Mikey.

Mikey's main coping strategy was to occupy his time with drills and chess and volunteering in Medical. Now that winter was in full swing and people were getting cold and frail (or at least as cold and frail as someone who was training intensely to go to war could get), the nurses needed more and more help. Most of the stuff was retrieving supplies from other parts of the camp, or holding something open while the doctors did their thing. It wasn't too busying, but it made Mikey feel better about himself. At least it was better for him than staying around Gerard in their tent.

As the days went by, Mikey became a little resentful towards Gerard. It was like he wasn't even trying to get through it and live as peacefully as he could in an Army training camp. But Mikey reminded himself how sad Gerard was before he and Frank got together and how Mikey felt the same after he arrived in 1934. Hopefully Frank was dealing with the change in surroundings better than Mikey did. Frank had it better than Mikey, hopefully at least, since Mikey didn't expect to not be able to return, and plus, Frank wasn't the one who traveled two hundred years in the past. 

Still, it couldn't be easy. From what Mikey knew, the ships were pretty crammed and the food was even worse than at the camp since it had to last longer than a few days. At least on the ship, Frank didn't have to deal with an alternate version of his brother annoying him with his whining. 

Okay, it wasn't that bad. Mikey appreciated that he was able to still go through his drills without having a breakdown, and he was definitely getting better. Give it a month, Mikey figured, and he would be good as new. In the meantime, Mikey would just have to deal with it. 

So he did. He was right, Gerard did get better at an interval that wasn't too agonizingly slow. He talked to Mikey a little more as time passed, though Mikey made sure never to bring up Frank, which was hard, because he knew that was the reason Gerard was suffering and he would probably be better if he just talked about it, dammit! But Mikey couldn't force him to do anything, so for the moment, they just made small talk. It was awkward as hell, especially considering the deep conversations they were having in the middle of the night, just a few months ago. It felt like years, though. Time always seemed to fly by, and yet never pass fast enough in the camp.

Time - it was an odd concept, one that humans had been studying in detail for about a hundred years, when Mikey was from. Here, they were still stuck in the belief that time was a fixed progression of events, that it could never be changed and that travelling backwards along the axis was impossible. That was so odd to Mikey. Time was a progression of events, sure, but one's mind could make it feel slower or faster, depending on an individual's mood and feelings. the timeline that Mikey was experiencing was one of many billions that were possible. No one of those possibilities was more 'true' than the others.