The piss-stained hallucination kept grinning.
But Damien no longer heard it.
Because something shifted—snapped—inside him.
That bile-thick voice, that pathetic display, that smugness reeking of surrender dressed up as survival... it all blurred. Faded. Became background noise to something else.
Something louder.
Hotter.
Sharper.
A memory—no, a thousand memories—flashed like teeth behind his eyes.
White sheets. Bleach-stained ceilings. Machines blinking without purpose. His body, raw and thin, reduced to a husk stretched over bones. Living in piss and IV bags while his mind screamed for a fight that never came.
Of course he was bitter. Who the fuck wouldn't be?
He was a teenager. Barely on the edge of becoming something. And instead, the world shoved him into a bed and said stay there. Said rot quietly. Said accept this.
So yeah. He'd raged.
He'd hated everything. The doctors. The nurses. The goddamn color of the curtains.
But more than that?
