AN: This is a shorter one but I love Jimmy

Jimmy doesn't talk about the war. He doesn't pretend it didn't happen, he can't do that. But he doesn't talk about it. Even if someone asks him about it, if it's too personal, he doesn't give a straight answer. He won't deny that he was a soldier, but ever since he's gotten home, he's worked his hardest to try and make sure that didn't define him. He likes to think of someone who didn't know him walked up to him and started a conversation, they wouldn't be able to tell that he was a  veteran.

That's not to say that he's trying to forget. The images he sees every night when he goes to sleep won't let him do that. But he's trying to do more with his life than dwell on what happened. That's why he kept up his saxophone playing. Why he got into law school. Why he joined the band, ultimately. So that he could be more.

That's what he was trying to do, anyway. It got hard though, when he slipped up and let himself think about something else. Namely, the feeling of panic when his ship was attacked. What it was like to be treading water in the middle of the ocean, looking around at his friends, his fellow soldiers, and coming to the realization that none of them were alive.

How it had felt when he swam over to his best friend (though they had been a bit more than friends, if he was being honest) and trying to wake him up, even though he logically knew that he never would.

He thought about things like that more often than he would like. But when he did, he tried to get rid of them by going through a case study, or playing his saxophone until it felt like the weight had been lifted off of him.

He didn't talk about those things, though. If he did, he did so only vaguely, and tried to pretend that he didn't care about it. Even though he did. He cared more than he wanted to.

But he tried to care about the other things more. And slowly, but surely, he could feel himself becoming successful.