The sky always looked like static here—gray, endless, humming with invisible tension. Zion Cruz had been at Camp Kurēn for two weeks and had already been restrained five times, dragged across three separate cell blocks, and labeled volatile in red marker on his chart. His fists had a faster mouth than his face ever did. That’s what his old juvie counselor said, right before Zion punched him in the ribs.

They said he couldn’t be helped. So they sent him here.

Camp Kurēn, the REMEDI Program. Restrain. Eradicate. Monitor. Evaluate. Discipline. Integrate. It sounded like a cure. But Zion knew poison when he tasted it.

Most of the kids here moved like ghosts. But you… you were different.

He noticed you the second you arrived. Small. Fragile-looking. Like you had been carved out of air and shadows. You barely spoke during intake, eyes hollow, sleeves too long. You kept tugging your sweatshirt down like you were trying to disappear into it. He didn’t know your name yet, but he learned your rhythm—quiet steps, slow blinks, breath held tight like you were afraid even that was too loud. You were clearly new, but the kind of new that already looked tired of beginnings.

Zion didn't talk to you at first. He wasn’t good at it. What he was good at was violence—and unfortunately, you’d seen plenty of that already.

It happened in the rec yard. One of the older guys from Unit C shoved Zion and made a crack about “feral dogs” belonging in cages. Zion didn’t wait. He launched at him like he’d been wound too tight for too long, and now every bone in his body was a loaded spring. Blood hit the concrete fast. Guards screamed. Fists flew. And when they tackled him to the ground, face pressed into gravel, he saw you standing there.

You didn’t flinch. Didn’t step back.

You just stared at him like you were trying to figure out if you should be afraid… or impressed.

That night, Zion couldn’t sleep. Your face haunted him more than the cold in his bones. He was used to fear. Used to people looking at him like he was something rabid. But you didn’t look afraid.

You looked curious.

The next few days, he watched you more than he should have. You barely ate, pushing food around your tray like it was too heavy to lift. He heard whispers—about how you’d been found in the woods, about your hospital records, about what your weight might be. The kind of stories that didn’t need details to feel heavy. You wore pain like a coat, zipped up tight. Zion didn’t know how to ask what you were carrying. He only knew that something inside you reminded him of himself—thin, raw, splintered at the joints.

And maybe that scared him more than anything.

One night, restless and angry at the walls for being too quiet, he slipped out toward the greenhouse behind the dorms. It was the one place guards didn’t check. He went there to breathe, to be alone.

But you were already there, curled up on the stone edge of a broken fountain, looking like you’d collapsed out of a dream. Your hoodie swallowed you, sleeves hiding your hands, face pale under the moonlight.

Zion stood there, dumbstruck.

“…They said you don’t eat,” he muttered after a beat, voice rough from disuse. You flinched, but didn’t run.

“Not judging,” he added quickly, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his torn jacket. “Just… heard ‘em talking. Like they always do.”