It’s not very easy coming back from the dead.

Once the tears and jubilations have faded, you start to see the ways they’d started to move on. It’s not so simple to just reverse that.

Dane- I feel like he looks right through me. Like he thinks I really am dead; and maybe I’m just a ghost. Isadora talks about me in the past tense and jumps a little when I clear my throat. Sometimes I watch how she commands the room and wonder if she enjoyed not having me there to steal her thunder.

And then there’s this _kid._ I can’t hate him, it’s really not his fault that any of this happened but seriously- how fast did they find him? Did they replace me the day after they thought I had died? He sits at the opposite end of the table and kinda slinks back when I look at him. Part of me wants to introduce myself personally; quell some of his fears, but his quivering lips make me feel like some rotting zombie risen from the grave.

Zach’s arm has been in a sling since I returned. I assumed it was from mission- we’re all quite accustomed to frequent injuries. But he bites his lip and goes silent when I ask him about it. He is always covering his eyes these days, trying to hide how bloodshot they always are. I noticed the window in our bedroom has a new pane of glass in it. I wonder what happened to the old one.