"Oh, and you think I wasn't?" He shouldn't allow for this - for this shit to get to him, to crawl under his skin, but he barks it out before he can bite it back and it curls up under his skin like something sick and poisonous. Cursed from the cradle, cursed from the womb, leaking into everyone's lives and cracking open their skulls like geodes to the thing that would rip their minds apart, that thing without a face that wanted him alive and so refused to let him fade out with a fistful of meds when that should've been enough.

No.

He's not here to play this game. He's not here to play the game of who had it worse, because who wins? No one fucking wins.

So he breathes out.

"Like it or not, we're in this shit together. I'm choosing this, okay? I'm choosing to help, because I said I wanted to, and you don't get to decide whether I meant that or not. So come on."