Owen fitz Gerald at one time was a normal child for a lesser nobility family. His father had arranged for Owen to be fostered at the Earl's castle around the age of seven as a Page. This was normal practice in the kingdom, in that the heirs would receive training as Pages from a young age. It was a militaristic kingdom, and so a high priority was placed on learning warfare as well as administration and social manners.

However, not long before he was due to leave for the Earl's castle, Owen started having nightmares about an alien experience to his own life. It started with a dream about him going into an empty concrete bunker in the desert at night and sitting down on a bench. (Technically, it was more of a blast shelter, made of prefabricated reinforced concrete blocks aligned into a straight tunnel with detached ends for soldiers to enter or exit.) Owen had never seen a desert, nor had he ever seen concrete. But in the dream, these things were not a surprise to him. What he did feel was an overwhelming sadness and despair about his life falling apart beyond repair.

That was when he pulled his pistol out of the shoulder holster, loaded a magazine, slid the slide back to load a cartridge, let the slide snap forward, pointed the barrel at his temple, and disengaged the safety. Somehow Owen knew that the pistol was an M9 Beretta with 9mm bullets. Normally soldiers of his rank would be issued the M4 carbine chambered in 5.56 NATO, but his job specialty also got issued the M9. It did not even occur to Owen during the dream that none of these weapons existed in his world. However, he did feel the surge of adrenaline and outright panic as he tried to pull the trigger.

No, I still can't do it yet, Owen thought. The army trains with a lot of repetition on important things, so that a soldier can do their job on impulse without even thinking about how to do their job. That way, when everything goes to hell and soldiers face fear and the potential for panic in unexpected situations, a soldier can fall back on their training and still fight.

That's what I need to do, Owen thought. I need to train myself up to this so that I can finish this job. Owen knew his military career was over and he expected a divorce. He already had trouble in the past with getting decent civilian jobs due to his poor social skills, so there was no way he could live somewhere and survive while paying monthly child support payments. He would basically be trying to support two households with wages hardly above minimum wage. Failure to pay could result in losing his driver's license in some states and jail time in others. However, if he could die here in a warzone, he trusted that his soon to be ex-wife would put the military life insurance (SGLI) payout to good use in raising the kids. There would also be survivor benefits and the kids would get their college paid for. It's a good deal, all I have to do is to follow through. Everybody really will be better off without me, and I am out of viable alternatives.

So Owen dropped the magazine out of the pistol, then cupped his palm over the ejection port in the slide while turning the M9 upside down. Then he pulled the slide back to eject the cartridge. Then, like the good soldier he was, he pulled the slide back again to visually verify that the chamber was indeed empty, then let the slide spring back in place, reengaged the safety lever, and put the pistol down. He put the ejected cartridge that was still in his palm back in the magazine, because there was full accountability for all weapons and ammunition issued to soldiers. Then he put the magazine back in the magazine pouch of his shoulder holster, and returned his attention to the pistol.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

So now that the pistol was safely unloaded, he pointed the barrel back to his temple, disengaged the safety, and pulled the trigger for a satisfying click as the hammer fell. Then he pointed the barrel down and away in a safe direction as he had been trained, slid the slide back, let it snap forward to activate the action, then pointed the barrel back at his temple. Another click as he pulled the trigger.

So this continued in an isolated desert bunker on a dark night. Slide back. Spring forward. A second of delay, then a click. Another second of delay. Slide back, spring forward. Another second of delay. Click. After a while, Owen remembered something that asshole counselor he had been forced to see recently had told him. It was the story of a soldier on the FOB who had shot himself in the head with his M4. This soldier missed the critical part of the brain for living, and the medics got to him before he bled out. So that soldier survived, but he will be really stupid for the rest of his life. Maybe the temple is just where the thinking part of the brain is located, Owen reasoned as he continued his pistol training. I need to find the location of the part of the brain used for things like breathing and stuff is.

Slide back, spring forward. A second's delay, and a click. Another second of delay. Slide back, spring forward. Thus Owen clicked the night away in his dream, until he suddenly sat up in his bed as a seven year old child again. He was covered in sweat and his heart was racing.

"The hell was that!?" Owen exclaimed in shock.

Thus began Owen's nightmares. They were not always the same. Other events were of marital discord, his daughter telling him not to come back home, severe bullying from his unit, unfair slander and lies about him that ruined his career, public humiliation, daily rocket attacks, etc. He felt such despair from the enemy never even getting close to killing him, that he realized that if wanted a job done right, he would have to do it himself.

Meanwhile, Lady Alicia noticed a change in her son, and wasn't sure what was going on. Owen's dreams included ridicule and humiliation from seeking help, as well as people twisting what he said in order to make things worse for him. Furthermore, there was no way she would understand these dreams. So he wouldn't tell her anything, other than he was getting bad dreams. Lady Alicia hoped this was a phase, and wrote to her husband at court in the capital in order to delay sending Owen off to the Earl's castle.

Owen was pleased at the delay, since he was sleepy all the time and didn't want to talk to anyone anymore. He would stay in his room a lot. However, his new body had more energy than that worn out soldier's body, so Owen would occasionally do calisthenics by himself. This kept him in adequate shape while using up time and energy.

As Owen fell deeper into the habit of seclusion and isolation, Lady Alicia felt greater concern as well as the seeds of disappointment in her son. He had odd ideas that he would express as if he was an adult, and he refused to act like the heir or even do the training duties required of heirs. After the disappointment took hold, then she felt resentment towards him over his disappointing behavior, and finally resignation with her failure of a son.

As for Owen's father, he stayed busy at court in the capital and rarely saw his family. However, Owen's father recognized that if his son was having a nervous breakdown or something, it could at least be covered up as an illness if Owen stayed home. Letting Owen have a breakdown at the Earl's castle would ruin his family's honor and position, so Owen's father agreed to let Owen stay home. Finally, his faithful knight Sir Thomas offered to attempt to salvage Owen and to train him himself before it was too late, so Owen's father sent Sir Thomas back to Beckthorpe in one last effort. And that is what Lady Alicia and Sir Thomas were arguing about when Owen interrupted earlier in this story to say he was going to Beckthorpe with Gerald.