It was going down. Commodus was coming to the Waystation, and people needed step up to defend it. Problem was, half the people at Waystation didn't even live there, much less had any loyalty towards it.

So, the solution was easy. Invite everyone to stay, to be there, to fight for what could be they're house.

And Lityerses was one of those people.

And when Josephine told him and the rest he could stay, the reaction was instant.

He opened his mouth, and only a choked, strangled noise emerged. Nothing human, nothing coherent. Then he slid down the wall like a marionette cut from its strings, knees drawn to his chest. The sobs started almost immediately, wracking him from the inside out. Harder than anyone should have to cry.

It was more than grief. It was a storm of fractured memories and unprocessed pain. Every moment with Midas came rushing back—the way he had been toyed with, twisted, dehumanized, forced to obey commands that made him recoil from himself. The manipulations of Commodus layered over that, like burning salt into a wound that had never closed. The violence, the betrayal, the relentless tests of his loyalty—his brain replayed it all like a broken record, and every replay rewrote itself as trauma.

He wasn’t just crying. His body trembled as though it were trying to expel years of fear and torment all at once. Blood from the fight matted his hair and streaked his clothes, but it didn’t register. Pain had long ago become a background hum compared to the mental weight crushing him. Every sob shook him so violently that it seemed the very walls might crumble under the force.

The worst part wasn’t the physical scars—it was the inside. He had learned, painfully, that people could not be trusted, that kindness could be weaponized, that the people who said they loved him might just be preparing the next punishment. To be offered a home now—it should have been relief. But all he felt was confusion, terror, and the acute disbelief that someone could want him for anything other than what he could do for them.

His tears fell freely, mixing with blood and dirt, as he pressed his face to his knees. He wasn’t sobbing for the fight. He wasn’t sobbing for himself. He was sobbing for all the versions of himself that had been broken, shattered, and left alone in the shadows of monsters like Midas and Commodus.

He was a Reaper. He had survived hell. And now, for the first time in a long time, he didn’t know what to do with safety.