i've been thinking for months now about why kougami is the way he is. y'know, all the not showing emotions and repressing it all, channeling all that pain into Work, whether that means revenge or being a mercenary or being in the SAD. i was thinking, oh is it childhood trauma? daddy issues? emasculation at a vulnerable time? but i think now. maybe. maybe it's just that feeling those feelings hurts so fucking much. and he can take physical pain, yeah, you can paralyze him from neck down, you can shoot him in the abdomen, you can torture him and beat the crap out of him and he'll pull through just fine. but emotional pain. the toll it takes to *feel* something. the pain of allowing yourself to feel the good stuff, allowing yourself to appreciate the good in life and then sudenly having it all taken away. the pain of loss, loss over and over again. and it piles on, too. a shot to the abdomen heals eventually but the pain of being alive, it's kinda there, always. so you channel it into action because sitting with those feelings, actually feeling them, feels worse than the possibility of death