Reaper's Lullaby

Gus: Worth

"Your value doesn't decrease based on someone's inability to see your worth."
- Unknown

Jeff was the first one to visit Gus in the infirmary the morning after his rescue. He came in with a huge smile on his face.

"You're alive!" he exclaimed.

"Course I am. You saw me last night," Gus mumbled.

Jeff sat down in the chair next to Gus's hospital bed. "Yeah but you weren't exactly in a good state of mind. So why'd you split?" he asked.

Gus shrugged. "The EMDR shit was gettin' too hard. I couldn't handle it."

"Why didn't you come to me? Or Gina?"

"I don't know," Gus said truthfully.

Jeff was quiet for a long time. Gus turned his head away. The silence between them grew large in the small room, but it wasn't uncomfortable. Both of them were busy with their own thoughts.

"You like to run away when things get hard," Jeff said at last.

"I guess so."

"For a long time you've only had yourself to trust."

"Yeah."

"It's scary to let people in, huh?"

Gus shrugged. "Kinda."

"Gus, I know this work is hard on you," Jeff said after another silent pause.

Gus laughed coldly. "You don't know shit about what it's like."

Jeff leaned back in his chair and looked at him thoughtfully. "You're right. I probably don't. You've lived through things I don't even want to think about."

"Because I disgust you," Gus said.

Jeff leaned forward, and Gus could feel his sudden anger, but for whatever reason he knew that anger wasn't directed at him. 

"Wrong. You don't disgust me, Gus. Those monsters disgust me. If I could get my hands on the people who hurt you I'd rip their fucking spines out. Any good and decent person would feel the same. What they did to you disgusts me."

"Same thing."

"It is not the same. You are not what happened to you, Gus. You're not what those people perceived you to be. You're not a thing. You're not a toy. You're not a punching bag."

"Then who the fuck am I?" Gus asked softly, hot tears filling his eyes.

"The good news is you get to choose. But you wanna know what I see?"

Gus shrugged, rubbing the tears that were running sideways onto his ears.

"It goes without saying that you're strong as fuck. But you're still soft too, which makes you even stronger. You're a survivor. You have excellent people skills. You're funny as hell. You bring the mood up in every room you go into. You know why people like you, Gus?"

Shrug.

"'Cause you're happy when no one else is. And out of everyone, you have the biggest reasons to not be happy, but you are. People wanna be around you because feeding off your happiness is the only happiness a lot of them are ever gonna get. We live in a self-centered, negative-ass society, and people like you are very rare."

Gus scoffed. "I ain't happy."

"Maybe not right now at this moment, but it's a part of your personality and it'll always be there. You're not happy right now because you're in the fight of your life. Not only are you fighting your addictions like everyone else here, but you're also fighting your past and your demons. That's some really tough stuff, and maybe I haven't said this enough or at all, but I'm proud of you, Gus."