Aria Cage

“I need to know that what you feel isn’t because of what we went through, what Daddy has done to us. You always said he trained me, brainwashed me to please him. But he did much worse than that, Nate… I think he trained you to love me enough to go through anything for me.”
― Aria Cage, Roar

“My fingers trace the IV line to his inner arm where the paramedics had placed a cannula. I freeze. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I just… can’t.

It’s him. I don’t have to look at his face, or his chart to know what’s screaming in my heart and churning my stomach. That one scar on his hand in the shape of a “D” tells me who he is.

I barely recognise the call of my name, the concern from the lips of my team as I stand there, willing my eyes not to look up and see the face of the one person I ruined. But they betray me, and I see the harder features of a boy I once loved. My best friend, my protector, my secret, is lying on the bed, half naked with a piece of steel protruding his shoulder, maybe penetrated right through his subscapular. There have been so many changes over his body since I was fifteen. A lifetime of sorrow, lies, and pain; all because of me. Nate lost everything because I’m a coward, a dirty-fucking-damaged-coward.”
― Aria Cage, Roar