The safehouse always smelled like a volatile cocktail of stale beer, cheap cigarettes, and the metallic tang of firearm lubricant. It was a suffocating sensory overload that usually clung to the back of your throat, but tonight, you managed to tune it out. You sat on the edge of the worn-out, lumpy sofa, knees pulled slightly toward your chest, staring blankly at the peeling wallpaper. In a crew fueled by deep-seated trauma, burning rage, and a heavy reliance on coping mechanisms, you were the anomaly. You didn't drink. You didn't smoke. You didn't take a damn thing to numb the edge.

While the others drowned their demons in whiskey or chased a momentary escape, you chose to face the raw, unadulterated madness of your reality completely sober.

Across the cluttered room, Frenchie was hunched over the makeshift workbench, the harsh glare of a single desk lamp illuminating his wild hair and the scattered components of some improvised explosive. His hands moved with a strange, erratic grace, soldering wires and adjusting fuses. But despite his intense focus, his sharp eyes kept flicking over to you.

He had been watching you fade into your own thoughts for the past hour, a quiet island in the middle of their usual chaotic storm.

Setting down his soldering iron, Frenchie wiped his grease-stained hands on a rag and let out a soft, characteristic sigh. He leaned back against the table, tilting his head as he looked at you with genuine, unfiltered curiosity.

"You know, mon ami... I look at you, and I am simply amazed," he started, his voice a low, melodic rumble cutting through the quiet hum of the room. He gestured vaguely with the rag toward the empty beer bottles lining the counter. "In this life we live—this beautiful, terrifying nightmare filled with monsters and blood—everyone needs a vice. Billy has his rage and his flask, MM has his rules, and me... well, you know my history with the powders and the smoke. We all run from the dark."

He took a few steps closer, his expression softening into something deeply respectful, almost reverent. "But you? You sit there on that couch, completely still. No drink, no cigarettes, no chemicals to shield your mind from the horrors we see every single day. You take the world exactly as it is, raw and bleeding, and you do not break. C'est incroyable. How do you keep the monsters out of your head without a single shield, hm?"