ain't no thing like me 'cept me

If he was ever gonna learn his lesson about letting his mouth run until it's talked him into something he doesn't know how to back down from, it would've happened long before now.

Never show weakness is not a lesson the universe teaches with any kind of mercy, and he knows intimately how insane the thought of trying to unlearn it can sound when you're still in survival mode.

He's well used to thinking of his body as a tool, as nothing more than the sum of the purposes it can be turned to.

There are still parts he'd go back and change if he could; after everything, he still hasn't fully let go of the guilt for being the only one who made it out, even if he understands more clearly now that it's the fuckers who put them in that position that really carry the blame. But ultimately, all of it together made him who he is, and these days he's more or less at peace with that. He can't change what he's been through. All he can do is wear surviving it with pride.

He's finding his way without a map here, but he knows in his bones that if he's doing this he wants it to be different from what he's seen before. He doesn't know what the fuck that looks like, but that's been just as true of every other tenuous foothold carved into the sheer face of Being A Fucking Person, and so far the common factor in all of it has been finding a way to trust the people around him; not just to have his back, but to call him on it if — when — he fucks up.