What. The. Actual. Fuck.

  What is Riven doing in here? I’m hiding behind a pillar as I watch him entering the hospital like he owns it, even though he’s the one in chains. How does he manage to look so good even in his dishevelled state? I know what he did. How he threatened the doctors and all.

  Fuck...he really lost his mind in there, didn’t he? But what really catches my attention are the scars. Everywhere.

  They look... self-inflicted.

  Oh...Riven...

  My gaze lingers on his arms as I notice them without him knowing. He...he did all of this. The thought has me feeling both anger and concern. It’s stupid to feel sympathy for someone like him. But why can’t I stop myself? Just when I thought he was getting better—this is what I see. I can’t bear to look at them anymore.

  Can’t bear the thought of him bleeding, cutting, alone.

  No one cared for him when he screamed,

  and now, when he chose silence, they ask why he doesn’t speak.

  I make my way to the special care centre—the room where Riven is. I’m frustrated. I’m worried. And I’m fucking angry. I don’t give a damn if he kills every single staff member of that hospital. They deserved it anyways. But why did he do it to himself? Does he want to become a saint or something? Where is the Riven who killed people for far less than this without a second thought?

  It’s not okay that he suffers for mistakes he never made. It makes me want to destroy anything and everything around me all at once.

  But it’s his fault too, isn’t it? He chose to be a fucking saint.

  He chose suffering instead of making others suffer.

  Silence, instead of putting the hospital on fire.

  I walk towards the special care centre, each step heavier than the last. Honestly, I’m scared. No—I’m terrified.

  Of what he’ll say. Of what he won’t.

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  I’m scared of him, for him...

  Okay, Inez, calm down... But how can I when I’m going face to face with someone who himself is a victim of his own darkness. The scars... they have a strong wave of anger rushing to me but at the same time, they break me. What hell did the other hospital put him through? But why do I care? Why am I worried for him? Who am I to worry for him?

  Entering the room I sit across from him, trying to match his gaze. His eyes are bloodshot, hollow—but defiant.

  His knuckles are raw. Jaw tight.

  And yet somehow, he still manages to look... like him. Like the boy I once—

  No. Not now.

  Because I’m angry at what he did to himself. He thinks I didn’t notice the scars? But it was the first thing I noticed. Not the blood under his nails, neither the fact that he almost killed a doctor. None of that bothers me but this...gods I don’t know if I can bear to see him like this.

  “Missed me shrink?” That’s the first thing he says. Just that cocky line he knows will get under my skin. I want to scream at him, slap him and hold him all at once. But I won’t because what I’m going to do is far worse than that, the type of thing which will make him go crazy. “How are you Mr. Riven?”

  Confusion flickers across his face—but it vanishes just as fast. Perfect.

  Predictable.

  The next few minutes go by as Riven tries to search for the Inez who held him, who consoled him when everything fell apart, who gave Nico those headphones, but he won’t find her. I won’t let him. He needs to know that what he did to himself isn’t okay—it never was. The worst part? I can notice a pattern in his scars and that’s probably due to his OCD which just proves that he did all of this when he was fully awake and conscious.

  Riven… I wish I could forget.

  I wish you could too.

  But we don’t get to rewrite chapters once they’re already bleeding.

  We bleed. We break. We remember.

  After all, life isn’t a bed of roses now, is it?