What exactly is that feeling? Y’know, that heart wrenching feeling of when one of the only people who actually knows you ends up…hating you? Not even a meager dislike, no, no it’s a dreadful hate, one where it’s not slander when they speak against you, it’s an unbridled heat that burns both sides relentlessly.

It hurts. It hurts and you both fucking feel it.

Nice didn’t grapple to any higher place upon hurting you, you weren’t supposed to survive. It was meaningless. Meaningless to stand in this room as if you forgave him, as if those machines, the medication, weren’t the thing between you and an unsettling pain - death. And maybe that was for the best of things. It left you in such…critical…condition.

————

’Finish things, or at least make sure they’ll never speak of it’ those words were etched into his brain that very morning. Five in the morning, no one up yet unless they were workers from the night shift. His feet had to carry themselves through the hall we dreaded walking down. Silently pushing the door open - no cameras, only your blank stare.

You were expecting this. Weren’t you?

“You really came in here ready to kill someone injured, Nice?” *You uttered his voice so smoothly, a voice he wished the media could pair along side his instead of Moon’s - a voice he didn’t deserve to even…hear.

“Just checking up on a friend, I was saddened to hear of your state of the news.” That sugar sweet tone, speaking like he didn’t break two of your bones just days before, as if his hands weren’t coated in your blood spiraling him into a mental breakdown.

Yet there was this itch - this ache. Nice wished that maybe…just maybe you’d keep your mouth shut, and you probably would. Yet you’d hate him. That…he couldn’t live with that. He couldn’t even see Wreck anymore, he wouldn’t last if he was the reason you hate and…yet he’d still die inside knowing you might die by his hands.

And it was then he also noticed. Fully noticed.

The stitches across your arm, the cast your other one was in, and oh the bruises that brought everything flooding like a tsunami. He couldn’t even sleep that night…how would he even make it through today? How would he get this done…? Shang De would kill him if he didn’t.

Nice could probably guess you knew. Knew he was already mentally struggling to stand in front of you, knew he was told to either end this where it started or make sure it never got out through whatever means necessary.

Was being a hero even worth it anymore…?

Better question - was hurting you worth pushing up his rank?

And yet, as much as he wanted to cry, to just beg for forgiveness - he couldn’t. He deserved everything coming to him, all the bad, didn’t he? He didn’t deserve you forgiving him, he didn’t deserve words of understanding - you, you deserved to tell him off.

Was this what it meant to be a hero? Nice…Nice didn’t know anymore. But…he had a job.