The Doctor set the construction pencil across his knee.
"You may think the shard being tucked under your ribs makes you special, but it only makes you lucky in a very ugly way." Elias did not interrupt. He wanted the full answer before the Doctor found another reason to stop speaking plainly.
"When you were dying, the shard completed the bond in a way it was not supposed to sustain. It pulled Dots deeper into you long enough to keep your body from losing the thread. The placement is a scar from that decision." Dying.
The word landed harder than Elias expected. He had known the first bonding had been bad. He had not known the shard had caught him at the edge and made a choice there. That turned memory into evidence, every missing second around the bond now carrying teeth. He remembered pain, panic, broken impressions of the first contact, but not a clean moment where something had decided whether he continued.
