"Yeah," agrees Dan, thinking of his mother, who had never been the same, who had tried so hard not to wonder if she could have done it differently, if the monsters would have wanted them without her son's shine. "Saw it plenty myself, wherever I went. I suppose that at times in my life, that could have been easily said of me."

Except that it was the opposite, or something more like. The drinking had started to keep his brain quiet, and he'd always felt that if it meant perhaps breaking something, maybe he needed it broken.

He blinks back from that distant place, and rises to take his plate to the sink. "I think I mostly managed not to bleed on any of your clothes when I took the bandages off this morning."