Katurian was so exhausted that it looked like he was sporting two black eyes. His nose was a crooked mess of bruises. The veins, oh the veins, they were visible all up and down his arms, on his legs, at his temples. Hunger, thirst, and fear had all eaten at his body. He felt like a corpse, and when he caught himself reflected in the rusted metal around him, he thought he looked like one, too.

No wonder the sponsors had been silent. Oh, they were probably thinking. This is no good. Let's just let this one die.

It wasn't only his body that had taken a beating. Katurian's thoughts were dizzying and his moods were unpredictable. He woke up in the middle of the night screaming into his fist, biting off his own fingernails, clawing into the dirt. When he closed his eyes, he saw Draco's dead eyes and Howard's mangled face. He saw Michal hanging with a noose around his neck.

At first, he barely registered that someone was coming close to his shelter of the day, an overturned plastic balloon. In fact, Katurian even slipped out of it in plain sight, his brain crying for water so loudly that he only bothered to look one way. When he emerged and saw Neffa, he froze and looked at him with wide, panicked eyes. Katurian was like a rabbit. A battered, torn up, fucked up rabbit.