Moving cautiously, like she thought he would get mad, Finale brought her gloves to the back of his suit, resting them on top of the two main exhaust ports. Warming them with the rush of heated air and blocking ninety-five percent of the air flow. She bit her lip.

Moving just as cautiously, using the one arm he still had sleeved into the frame, he poked at her hands, moving them an inch away from the vent.

“That close is fine. But don’t cover them.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Is it still warm, like that?”

She nodded, biting her lip.

“I’m stupid fond of you, you know that, right?”

She nodded. No more lip bite. “I’m sorry I’m a fuckup.”

“You’re not—”

“Fuck you!” the kid screamed. “What are you even doing!? What have you even been doing all this time!? You’re making things worse!”

It was the wrong words, in the wrong moment, when flashes of light danced around his vision, which was tinted a rose shade with the goggles he wore. His skin was slick with sweat from the heating issue, prickling still, his heartbeat hammering from the scare. The screaming and shouts in the distance.

It was the stars aligning in a way that delivered the words home. From an angry kid’s mouth to Withdrawal’s heart.

It took a nudge from Caryatid to get him moving again, make him realize he’d gone silent. A glance from her toward Finale reminded him what he’d been saying.

“You’re not a fuckup. Don’t worry.”

Caryatid laid a hand on his knee.

“What’s wrong?” Fume Hood asked, as she rejoined them. “Spooked? Guns do that. Especially for me.”

So hard to put into words.

“Not spooked. Meh,” he said, while feeling far from ‘meh’. He looked at the continuing ruckus. “War stories, I guess.”

“I didn’t think we had any,” Finale said.

“This is one of the ones all of us have,” he said. He looked back at Finale, but expecting her to connect the dots on something that vague was a bit unfair.

He’d told his team bits and pieces before, but… He told them now.

⊙

Withdrawal, Then

“Fuck you, you fucking fuck.”

The words, like sound and even things as inoffensive as the feeling of the hospital sheets against his skin, were pain. Distilled fucking pain. He was slick with sweat, hospital gown sticking to him. His hair, half-shaved, half long enough to stick to his nose, dyed, was in his eyes, and he couldn’t even muster the effort to fix it.

When he looked up, he saw his mother, dressed in the kind of clothes she would normally have worn to bed, her face flushed, her hair a mess.

“What are you even doing?” she harangued him, her voice shrill and drilling into his skull. “What have you even been up to, these past few months?”