"With Gregor and Ivan there?" Miles snaps right back, but he doesn't have the energy to argue that point to the ground right now, and it really isn't the point of this story, it's true. Yeah, he'd been having Dagoola flashbacks before he even set foot on the planet, and the nightmares after -- losing Sergeant Beatrice in a sea of shattered glass, falling down in her place -- he never really did shake them. It hasn't even been a year since that happened. Miles grips his mead tighter and wonders which will break first: his fingers or the cup.

He barks out a raw, near-hysterical laugh at that, surprising even himself. He hasn't even begun to touch on resurgence yet. That'll be a trip. It's a moment before he catches his breath, hand pressed to his forehead. They're edging ever closer to Miles's least favorite part of this story, slowly circling the drain.

"Yeah," he says, finally, and he tries his damnedest to make it sound flippant, "maybe that's because I got the shish kebab treatment with falling glass instead of having my chest blown open." God, it's nauseating to talk about. He buries his face in his cup and mumbles, "Think I'd have preferred the needler fire. At least that was quick."