“Life is pain, Dick. Anybody who says otherwise is selling something.”
He scoffed, taking two steps back as he was suddenly overcome with the need to physically remove himself from this conversation. His jaw tensed as he took a second to try to breathe evenly, to bring himself back down from the red he was currently seeing before he said something he would regret.
After a moment he shook his head, the breath of a laugh on his lips even though the situation was clearly anything but funny.
“That’s just it for you, isn’t it? No loopholes, no exceptions. The world is a dirty, awful, nightmare of a place, and there’s nothing anybody can do to change it.”
He took a deep, shaky breath, hoping to steady himself a bit because it felt like his entire body was vibrating with emotion.
“Well I can’t live like that. I refuse to. I won’t be you.”