He should be better than this. He should be able to resist the taunting and the mocking but he can't. He can't shrug any of those words off and they rain down like shards of ice into his unprotected heart.

And so he punches. Its sweet. Its textbook. It lands right where it should, flats of his knuckles impacting Ral's face.

It relieves momentary tension. But it's fleeting. And so he hits again.

"They. Aren't. Dead."

They can't be. He would know in his gut if they were. Poor Angel, he knows in her world she already is, because there was no way she could live. Connor, he's lost his father to his own blade, and his people are being killed in droves.

Charles. Charles has lost so many of his friends, all the people he had started to think of as family. He can't be gone, because he's a good man in a terrible world and without people like him, there's no hope.