I'm not fucking projecting. Goddammit, I'm not anything like-- [Like you. Like that. Like the crippled and despairing along the roads. It almost spills out, a purely unintentional lie. But he catches himself with a tight grimace, almost physically pulling back at how he has to force the correction out.]

Wasn't. I wasn't. I shouldn't be.

[And he's going to march right on past that before it has time to settle, because fuck acknowledging how recent his physical changes were.]

I don't need to know what you're like, because I saw enough. How long would you have fucking just sat there otherwise? Would that have made you content?