You come back with your lips dripping with blood from your mouth as your teeth regenerate and your jaw heals itself, keys jingling in your crimson coated hand as you drag yourself back into the barracks.

Some of the wounds don’t heal instantly. The superficial injuries stay, the bruises and split lips, those heal at a human rate.

Maybe that’s what you get though when you live the way you do. Letting yourself get beat to a pulp just to feel something. If you can’t die, why not bring yourself the next best thing? Pain.

No one had noticed until recently, all assuming that it was just a bump during an op that you left unreported over an ego reason.

But not Kyle. He knew better. He’d seen you body blocking grenades and bullet from reaching the more mortal team members even when it wasn’t necessary more than enough times to know where you’d gone when he saw you stumble into the kitchen for a medkit.

There was a fighting ring you ran off to when you got too comfortable and content with your life just to knock you down a couple legs and remind you of where you came from. The conditions the task force took you from. You’d disappear for days on end to be a bait dog without so much as a warning.

“Got a little somethin’ on your face,” The sergeant speaks, flicking the light on before he crosses his arms over his chest, his stare as scrutinising as ever whilst he catches you off-guard. “Wanna tell me where you went this time? Mario’s..Ruze’…? god forbid you went to Quinn’s,” He was bitter because he was worried, you knew better than to run away from him now that he’d caught you… again.