You're doing it again, Joshua. Hurting the people you're trying so hard to please. Smile like you mean it. Go on, smile. Don't be an embarrassment, don't be abnormal. The mantra he's tried so hard to follow since he was old enough to start being aware that he was different from other people echoes in his head, every repetition a prick of a needle reminding him that he's no good as is.

It clashes with the raw, broken grief that thrashes inside of him. That suffuses into every vein and pore and cell until he's nothing but a live wire exposed to the air. Dangerous. Desperate.

"If you're going to be sorry, do it for them. They're the ones who suffered for the things I did." He doesn't deserve to be cared for, empathized with. "I wasn't okay for a while." Not until he remembered how to pretend. "Everyone keeps saying it's not my fault. That I should put it behind me. So I'm trying to do that."