He woke up with the vague feeling that something was different.

Somehow he felt light. There was still the phenomenal sense of loss -but the feeling of being trapped under someone's shoe, like an unfortunate cockroach, was gone. His eyes flit from one familiar face to another, thinking it wasn't so bad.

If he came to terms with the fact that he was already limited, in some sense, he could as well learn to live with it without being unnecessarily morose.

'There must be something you're dying to say, dear.' The speech therapist stood at the door, being unnecessarily pushy with the subject. It had been more or less a month since he had woken up and no one -not one of them, at least, had ever heard him speak.

He knew what to expect -the doctor had told them about the consequences of the injuries he'd had. But Baekhyun seemed defiant to any type of hope-rendering speech. When he was there, he just lay in his bed -or sat in the sorry-looking rocker, staring out the window as if he was contemplating something important. But when he tried to talk to him, he would answer with noncommittal grunts or a nod or a shake of his head.

That day, he was being particularly difficult.

He dreaded the hour to come -he had always dreaded Mondays, but more so at the moment.

 He wasn't sure he was ready to face everyone just yet. After all, they were already doing a good job of keeping what had happened to him a secret. And then there was the fact that he'd been avoiding them for weeks.

“Just say something,” the therapist had said before he left. “Maybe you’ll feel better. There’s a sense of accomplishment with that. And with your friends coming, who knows, you might be able to talk to them now.”

Baekhyun stared at his perfectly-made bed(turned down twice by the nurse aid earlier) with its stark white sheets and pale blue pillow. What was he supposed to say or not say)? What's more, what were THEY going to say?

At that moment, the door opened startling him, out of his misery.

"Baekhyun?"

 It was her again. Wren. She always seemed to show up at the most opportune times, which he had learned to expect, but always managed to surprise him.

She took one look at his pale face and turned away again, surprising him further He half-expected her to say something positively ephemeral that wouldn't make sense until the thing it applied to had already happened.

He was about to call out to her, but winced as soon as the first hoar