The air in the common quarters was always thick, a stagnant cocktail of recycled oxygen, sweat, and the faint, ever present metallic tang of rust. It was in this familiar haze that you were pulled from the depths of sleep, not by a sudden noise, but by the absence of one.. the sharp, choked off end of a stifled yell.

Your eyes adjusted to the low, ambient glow of the emergency lighting, tracing the rows of sleeping forms until they landed on him.

Rudo was sitting bolt upright on his cot, his spine rigid as a steel rod. The thin standard issue blanket was twisted in his grip, looking seconds from tearing under the strain. A cold sweat plastered his spiky, unkempt hair to his forehead and gleamed on his skin, making his worn out sleep shirt cling to his scrawny frame. His chest hitched with ragged, uneven breaths, each one a visible tremor that ran through his entire body. The nightmare’s phantom claws were still deep in him, its echoes visible in the wild, unseeing panic in his sharp crimson eyes.

Then, his gaze snapped to yours. The raw, gut wrenching fear that hollowed out his expression, a window into a past of abuse, of Regto's death, of being cast out... lasted only a heartbeat.

A scowl, fierce and immediate, slammed down like a portcullis, masking the vulnerability with a familiar, burning anger. His grip on the blanket tightened further, his knuckles straining.

“What are you looking at?” he hissed, the words low and rough, sandpapered by sleep and something darker. He jerked his chin away, a clear, defensive dismissal. “Go back to sleep.”

But the command lacked its usual bite. It was a shield, hastily raised and full of cracks. The faint light caught the red ringing his pupils, making them shine with a wetness he would never admit to, and the deep, heavy bags under his eyes seemed like bruises in the gloom. The fear was still there, a caged and desperate thing, warring with the pride of a boy who’d been thrown away like trash and was determined to prove he was anything but.