To suffer as they did, to be placed as they did. To have that option of giving up be right in front of them. To be able to wander meekly to their own demise, declaring that they had obeyed orders, and done all they could. To have hoped once, and had that hope trodden on. To suffer to the point that their heart ached simply to dwell on it. To take all that, and still reach within themselves, and claw out, at the bottom of it all, that fighting spirit that made them men of the Stormfront.
Oliver grit his teeth, the feeling in his own chest at a height. His own suffering that he was biting down, and fighting back. His eyes were a glow. They flickered from storm, to solid gold, and then to purple. He remembered all those things that made him what he was. "Be brave," he'd been told once, or perhaps several times, and now he could not even remember who the woman's voice was that had said it. He wondered whether it was his mother, when he found fear in him as a child.
