He knew, empirically, that things had gone poorly when he last went into the hotel. He knew that he hadn't felt well when he crossed from DC to Marvel, or when he'd had to travel back and forth to visit Shane. But it was a pale thing, an undeveloped idea. He knew it had been unpleasant, but felt he had been overreacting to it at the time, or that it hadn't been quite so bad, or that it had been about something else. A panic attack. A moment of weakness.
He felt a thrum of nervous anxiety detached from cause before stepping through the door behind Neil and Cris, but it wasn't until he was actually through that those feelings began to flood back in. He had forgotten the pain of it. How? How could this have translated into such a soft and meaningless memory? It was as if there was a hand around his heart, and his bones ached like they were being pulled through his skin. He tried to step forward, following the others down the stairs. By the time he was at the top with his hand on the banister, his feet refused to slide another step.
He didn't know what he looked like, as he had only been in the hotel in the last year or so on his own. He only knew the feeling, the blind panic, the tearing, as if his muscles were going to roll away from his skeleton like badly coiled springs. He had gone sheet white, with a distinct pallor of blue under his skin. With his chin to his chest, trying to catch a breath, his eyes were out of sight, but there was a flush of blood at their corners, stark red, burst blood vessels and broken veins.
He turned back, his hand sliding away from the rail. He was letting Sam down, but this wasn't about her, or Micah, who he'd forgotten about entirely. This was about escaping this wrong feeling, this internal collapse, the insanity. As he reached the door, the pain started to become more specific, like his eyes were being pecked at by birds, like his swiftly bruising fingernails were being pried off with tongs - the wheel, the flail -
And then back through the door. Regret would come later, but for now, breathing was imperative. He sat down on the floor beside the door they had used, and felt his heartbeat slowing, and the world slowly righting itself.