It starts like any other morning.

David Madsen is making the rounds through the halls of Blackwell when the unmistakable thud of gunfire sends him surging forward.

Sends him sailing backwards.

This isn't new to him; if anything this is all too familiar.

It was supposed to be different here.

The war was supposed to stay over there.

But he supposes things aren't that clear cut anymore.

Barreling through the Hallway, he wades through the panicked throngs of students; seemingly oblivious to the chaos around him.

There are only his directives:

Seek out, identify, neutralize.

Right now, there's no Mr. Madsen: there's Sgt Madsen on his first deployment.

In his first firefight.

The battle he's fought for the last 4 years.

The one they told him he was back from.

It certainly doesn't feel like it ended as he storms the door.

And suddenly it's like bursting through a passage to the past.

The syrupy texture of blood spattered across the wall and floor,

Freshly spent gunpowder filling his nostrils.

A bewildered figure

With a dead girl at his feet.

The recognition as to the who's is immediate, the rage doubly so.

It's all combat instinct as he sweeps the punk off his feet, an arm full of letter man jacket and throat.

They tell him later his roar of anguish shook through the narrow corridors of the building.

He doesn't recall it.

All he remembers is the crumpled body and the vacant eyes.

Another casualty.

Just a child.

An innocent live he vowed to protect.

And failed.

He's wrist deep in a flowing tide of crimson.

Trying to staunch the flow of blood.

Trying to will the wound to mend.

But there's only so much paper towels can do, and he's seen that glassy look all too often.

David Madsen has been a lot of things in this life: Years ago, he'd have told you he was a soldier at war.

And that is still applicable.

It didn't end in the arid Sunni Triangle.

Not after he touched down on American Soil.

Or when he made his wedding vows.

No, the war continues at the bottom of a bottle of Jack with a loaded Beretta in the garage.

It rages on in the sleepy streets of Arcadia Bay in the form of "suspicious trash".

And it rends his heart when it takes a daughter in law he couldn't protect.

Yeah, he survived his tour and made it home.

"Won the war." They'd joke.

But cradling the broken body of his wife's child on the cold porcelain tiles of a public bathroom?

That doesn't seem like much of a victory.