He held his arms crossed over his chest, self conscious, and inhaled deeply with his eyes closed. He let it out again in a little whoosh. Then he shivered as the illusion dropped, revealing his much more brawny body.
Lowering his arms slightly, he kept his eyes cast on the blanket, not quite ready to look at her.
His body, once mostly perfect barring a few small scars he'd gotten in his TTK-only days, was now almost unsightly. Between the experiments and Spence's beatings, the scars were nearly uncountable. Just like his face, his arms and legs were mostly clear, because they'd known that they should leave them in places less likely to be seen so the public didn't see them, but his torso and upper thighs were a mess.
The worst were the ones that were clearly medical in nature. The long line down the middle of his torso, ending at the little indent where most people had a belly button, and the horizontal line under the line of his ribs - from the vivisection and the surgery to put in his nanochain. The strangely shaped burns where different horrible testing equipment had been hooked up to his body. The places where little square and round sections of flesh had been cut away to be biopsied and experimented on.
"And that's not all," he said in a game show host voice, trying for darkly comical. "You're watching PTSD-TV - all maudlin, all the time."
Slowly, he lowered his arms so she could see the undersides of them - and the scars at his wrists. The purpose of the wounds he'd made there was very clear.
He bit his lip, mostly because he was trying to stop it from quivering. He finally looked up at her and with his voice a little choked, he tried to explain, "I didn't want to leave you. I didn't." He sounded desperate in his desire to make her understand that. "I got lucky one time. Got knocked into a drug store in a fight and I managed to sneak a razor into a candy wrapper and hide it in my mouth without looking at it so they didn't see, so I had it in the red room."
No, he couldn't look at her. He just couldn't. He clasped his hand over his eyes.
"I just wanted a way out before they used me to hurt more people. Not that it did anything, soon as I was healed up, Spence, she -"
No. No no, he wasn't finishing that sentence.
The tears started to trickle through his fingers.
"I didn't want to leave you. Or Rob. Or Bart. Or Kal. Or Ma. But it wasn't about just me."
He hadn't been able to escape. That meant to not be used to kill people, he'd needed to not be.
cw: mention of attempted suicide
"Okay. Okay."
He held his arms crossed over his chest, self conscious, and inhaled deeply with his eyes closed. He let it out again in a little whoosh. Then he shivered as the illusion dropped, revealing his much more brawny body.
Lowering his arms slightly, he kept his eyes cast on the blanket, not quite ready to look at her.
His body, once mostly perfect barring a few small scars he'd gotten in his TTK-only days, was now almost unsightly. Between the experiments and Spence's beatings, the scars were nearly uncountable. Just like his face, his arms and legs were mostly clear, because they'd known that they should leave them in places less likely to be seen so the public didn't see them, but his torso and upper thighs were a mess.
The worst were the ones that were clearly medical in nature. The long line down the middle of his torso, ending at the little indent where most people had a belly button, and the horizontal line under the line of his ribs - from the vivisection and the surgery to put in his nanochain. The strangely shaped burns where different horrible testing equipment had been hooked up to his body. The places where little square and round sections of flesh had been cut away to be biopsied and experimented on.
"And that's not all," he said in a game show host voice, trying for darkly comical. "You're watching PTSD-TV - all maudlin, all the time."
Slowly, he lowered his arms so she could see the undersides of them - and the scars at his wrists. The purpose of the wounds he'd made there was very clear.
He bit his lip, mostly because he was trying to stop it from quivering. He finally looked up at her and with his voice a little choked, he tried to explain, "I didn't want to leave you. I didn't." He sounded desperate in his desire to make her understand that. "I got lucky one time. Got knocked into a drug store in a fight and I managed to sneak a razor into a candy wrapper and hide it in my mouth without looking at it so they didn't see, so I had it in the red room."
No, he couldn't look at her. He just couldn't. He clasped his hand over his eyes.
"I just wanted a way out before they used me to hurt more people. Not that it did anything, soon as I was healed up, Spence, she -"
No. No no, he wasn't finishing that sentence.
The tears started to trickle through his fingers.
"I didn't want to leave you. Or Rob. Or Bart. Or Kal. Or Ma. But it wasn't about just me."
He hadn't been able to escape. That meant to not be used to kill people, he'd needed to not be.