"I am not what I think I am. I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am."
— Charles Cooley
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"Why you running?"
Michael's voice carried softly through the kitchen, unhurried, the words settling into the cool air like something that had always been there.
"You hurt me." He touched his chest lightly. A single crystalline tear traced a slow path down his cheek. The gesture was too perfect, too measured — an actor hitting a mark he'd rehearsed alone.
"How?" Zeke's usual lazy composure had frayed at the edges somewhere between the hallway and here. The refrigerator hummed behind him, a mundane counterpoint to the surreal shape of the conversation.
"Well, I do know how, but—" He paused. "What the fuck? You're even more of a monster than I am. Are you even human?" His metallic grey eyes moved over Michael's face, reading nothing.
