He settled into the bed next to her, his arm sliding carefully around her shoulders to keep her close. He swore internally--if he had gone back at all, even once in the last two weeks, if he hadn't been a coward, then maybe... but no. He knew better than that. He had to. He hadn't avoided it out of cowardice, but grief. If he had returned, seen her body, confirmed she was dead, then whatever hope that had clung to his heart would have truly died. Carson gave her a small squeeze as they lay together.<br/><br/>"Letto killed one of the Vanguard on his own, but the other two came after me," he explained quietly. "I killed one before I found you... laying there. The armored one--he must have stabbed you--he attacked me by surprise, but he didn't expect me to be as good as I was. I managed to get the upper hand when the third Vanguard shot me in the shoulder. A flesh wound, luckily, he missed anything important, but it stunned me long enough for the armored bastard to get a good swing in... he cut my eye basically right out of my head."<br/><br/>He hesitated, then lifted his hand to take the patch off, the small black shape kept in place by an adhesive. Beneath it, his eyelid was scarred and deformed, and through the damaged flesh his eye could be seen, white and clear. "TRIM fixed the damage, but the eye itself was too destroyed to be repaired. It's still in there, but... doesn't work." He put the patch back in place. "After that things get hazy... I remember crawling to you, checking for a pulse. I remember thinking you were dead. And then..." ... chaos. Letto had told him how he'd been found, with one Vanguard's head shot nearly off his body, and the other's torso a mangled, bloody mess... and still, Carson had been forced to stop, not content with the damage he had already done.<br/><br/>"Well. Anyway. I woke up about three days after that, though I'd been in and out of awareness the entire time. My body had been healed but my mind wasn't ready to accept that. And then it's just been... empty. Ever since. Runners started to arrive, but Natya had to train them. I... I haven't been able to bring myself to do much." He paused. "It didn't seem like there was much of a point."