It's the first heavy snow of winter when it happens. The change of the seasons sets his body to aching, old wounds halfways healed and those that never truly healed right bending and groaning like beggars on the street.
Lucky lies in his bed in the Vanator compound, barely holding back groans of pain and tears of regret. The scar on his chest feels the worst, a starburst of still red and angry skin. It feels as fresh as it did the week after he got it.
The one across his face, the jagged line that crosses his nose and just under his eyes, it hurts too. It feels like the pain of failure, the pain of never being able to rest until those voices behind his eyes always murmuring "you can do it" and "don't give up yet" can finally rest themselves.
He feels his other scars flare up with pain, the divot in the top of his left wrist where a merchant had tried to cut his hand off for stealing, the thin line around the base of his neck where a thief had attempted to choke him out with a spool of razor wire, the 8 long red lines stretching from his wrists to the middle of his forearms.
He still remembers that night, curled up in the corner of the back room of the Lowbrow halfways dead when Liche found him and patched him up.
That was when the voices started. Voices that sounded like Tequila and Cask.
He rolls back over and forces himself back to sleep, tears streaming down his cheeks and painful memories hurting him more than the dull pain of his scars.